https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-football-angry-chinese-fans-scorn-japan-defeat-world-cup-qualifying-4591031
China's football dream is fast fading, angry fans say, following its record World Cup qualifier loss to Japan.
No I didn't imply neither of those. Please read these articles because its a global phenomena and have been going forever:
https://hrf.org/a-history-of-sports-dictators-part-3-post-wwii-soft-power
Russia, North Korea, Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, China, and many more to name but a few. These democratically-elected human-right-loving governments heavily invest and spend out of their own pockets into national sports for two reasons: 1- Force ALL their athletes to spread national propagonda and pride of how amazing their country is. 2- Distract the oppressed confused angry youth to watch and criticize sports and athletes to distract them from the country's corruption and human right records.
Russia waged several wars and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Dagestani people, and controlled Chechniya and all it governments, yet we see Khabib and other Dagestani UFC fighters cuddle up to Putin and Ramazan Kadyrov, when they know inside how much harm they did to their own people, but they were bought with millions of dollars. I can provide several examples showing the same exact thing with every country I mentioned. These governments intentional involvments in sporting leages have been documemted and have been happening since ever.