Short-Sightedness is nearly entirely caused by environmental factors, in particular a lack of sunlight exposed to eyes. Previously it was thought to be caused by looking at too close objects, but recent research has shown a lack of sunlight leads to a lack of a growth stopping hormone within the eyeball. This leads to the eyeball continuing to grow longer, like an olive, leading to short-sightedness. This is a concern for all recent generations of people across the world, but is especially exacerbated in China. If you look at the way Chinese children are raised, it makes total sense - 12 + hours spent in a classroom for most of the day, with little outside exercise time.
Would having a league per each province, then a national league for provincial champs, increase compeitiveness/ participation/ engagement? Like formatted to European football, but instead of states, the provinces? Would that encourage building more football fields etc?
In my opinion, China doesn't need to bother itself anymore than it currently does with the game of football. Resources are better put to discovering how to compete at Olympics sports, the ones that test human physical limits. These physical abilities will come in handy in the game of football too in the future.
Depends on the goal of sports, be it purely economic or as a symbol of prestige. Volleyball certainly is a better bang for the buck economic proposition for the reasons as you mentioned, but sports are generally enjoyed for it's symbolicism/prestige. Frankly, soccer is a "world" sport, and there is value in being successful in a popular, standardized worldwide competition, same as the olympics. It may or may not improve China's image externally, but its likely that improving in soccer can foster more healthy internal nationalism and confidence. Being good as a less popular sport like volleyball doesn't hurt, but like India being good at cricket, holds much less importance.
Of course being good at football is what's wanted as the end goal. But more importantly, I think the big lesson is to find a model/template to develop a team sports infrastructure. Once you have a working model, you can use it for other team sports.
no one really cares about the olympics at this point outside of a select few sports and countries. Team sports are much more popular and have larger cultural and economic importance around the world.
China cares.
I know you are joking, but there are not even any major African-Chinese athletes. There are probably more African Japanese athletes. Again it’s ridiculous because just statistically there has to be more in China. There are probably more in Jamaica than Japan, lol (ie. Kyle Anderson/Li).
The system is complete garbage. The former Yugoslavia continues to produce NBA level players despite the country completely falling apart and killing each other for a good 10 years. It goes far beyond teamwork. If you were just bad at developing teamwork, then the naturally you can still produce elite singular talents. Basketball requires a good team to be elite, but an elite player has a far bigger impact than other team sports. China has neither a good team, nor elite talent.
This part shouldn’t matter. To get to those levels of excellence requires a certain kind of commitment and dedication. A Chinese Messi wouldn’t be happy being a big fish in a small pond, they would go play in the European leagues. That is how to get better. That is the kind of attitude that it takes to be the best. If they don't have that attitude, they will never achieve to the highest levels.
At some point you need to get better at identifying the elite traits. You can train 95% of physical abilities, lift weights, eat right, cardio, etc. It is that 5% that makes the difference. Almost all elite athletes are playing multiple sports when they grow up, and dominate their regular peers until they hit the mid-teens (running faster, jumping higher, etc.). At that point, that small difference will push them into one sport over the other. You look at the former Canadian basketball payer Steve Nash, he loved football (soccer) and was the best in his high school, but in the end he is in the basketball hall of fame.