The earliest sports practiced by Chinese people were dragon boat racing and various martial arts, but evidence exists of a game similar to football named Cuju being played as early as 50 BC.
However, the development and expansion of a modern sports industry in China began relatively recently, coinciding with economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping which saw the Chinese Communist Party adopt a "socialist market economy”. According to a 2015 paper published by Jie Zhang of Jinan University in Shenzen, “China's sports have been gradually transformed from a type of public welfare under the planned economy to a business under the market-oriented economy since the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978”.
