Guizhou village soccer seeks intl exchanges through BRI

Rongjiang's village soccer super league is one of the latest rural sports to attract spectators from both home and abroad. [Photo/ddcpc website]

The third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) was held in Beijing on Oct 17-18. At the forum, titled "New Space for BRI Cooperation: Health, Green, Digital, Innovation", of the Belt and Road Studies Network Plenary Meeting held on Oct 17, Xu Bo, head of Guizhou's Rongjiang county, represented the only county-level region in attendance.

This year, Rongjiang's village soccer super league (dubbed cunchao by netizens) has gained international recognition and an overseas reach.

According to the statistics of the Rongjiang government, during the cunchao period, the county was visited 3.38 million times, a year-on-year growth of 131.75 percent, and earned 3.83 billion yuan ($524.05 million) in tourism revenue.

Behind these impressive achievements is the shared aspiration for peace, development, and happiness between cunchao and the BRI.

People-to-people connectivity is the social foundation for jointly carrying out the BRI. Xu stated that Rongjiang will leverage this advantage to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in sports and tourism with countries involved in the BRI.

Next, Rongjiang will explore amateur grassroots football talent and plan to establish cunchao teams across the country, initiating BRI cunchao friendship matches, which are expected to bring about more opportunities for soccer and cultural cooperation among countries.

During the China International Fair for Trade in Services this year, cunchao and the English Premier League signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Beijing.

Subsequently, at the invitation of the English Premier League, players and coaches from Guizhou's cunchao teams visited Chongqing to observe and learn from grassroots football coach training.

In the future, cunchao teams will travel to Hong Kong with ethnic cultural cheering squads to compete against the Hong Kong All Stars Sports Association.