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This chapter critically evaluates whether football can attain recognition as a national sport in China. Article No. 11, released by the Chinese government in 2015, aimed to develop a new national strategy centralised on the sport of football to foster consumption and enhance national soft power. Consequently, this also means encouraging Chinese football fans to support the national football team. Comparing the significance of local football clubs and the national football team to Chinese football fans is deemed meaningless and unable to generate useful information to comprehend Chinese people's attitudes towards local and national communities. Through literature comparisons with established Chinese national sports such as Chinese martial arts, badminton and table tennis, the discussion reveals that football currently falls short of meeting the general criteria of invention and popularity to be considered a Chinese national sport. In the specific Chinese context, it also proves that football fails to meet the criterion of politics, hindering its identification as a national sport. Consequently, the chapter rebuts the assumption and advocates for the validity of comparing how fans assess their fandom for local and national football teams.

In the past 10 years, the scale of running events in China has increased dramatically, and the forms of running events have also become rich and diverse. Running is not only a social phenomenon but also a historical and cultural phenomenon as an organic part of human culture with its own sociological values in China. This chapter offers insight into the development of Chinese running culture and how this has emerged from ancient and modern Chinese running cultures based on Foucault's disciplinary power theory, biopower and the technologies of the self. This chapter argues that running culture in China constructs the subjectivity of the Chinese runners under the joint action of the technologies of power and the technologies of the self. The findings acknowledge how Chinese Runners present and express themselves by showing a ‘sense of presence’. Runners illustrate the implicit or explicit meaning and value of a particular way of life through running. Runners regard running as the technology of the self for self-expression and self-creation so that individuals can control their bodies and soul, thoughts, behaviours and ways of existence. Emerging technologies of power provide possibilities for the production of running culture in China, and the current policy under the technologies of power meets the needs of runners. In Chinese running culture, power was not oppressive but productive.

This chapter explores how the development of football fandom for the Chinese national team and local football clubs is strongly associated with societal changes. Although the performances of Chinese football teams, especially the national team, have failed to impress the world, football remains the most popular because of millions of supporters with loyalty and passion. Most studies related to fans mainly focus on the economic and political implications of spectatorship along with the rise of China. Nevertheless, few articles are available to answer the fundamental questions, such as ‘When did these supporters come out?’ and ‘What were the factors of the development of fandom?’. By going through archival records and published documents over the last decades, this chapter offers a comprehensive and historical analysis of the development of football fandom in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and deals with these unanswered questions. As such, this chapter does not intend to be the most authoritative one but is one of the rare sources to lay down the foundation for research on Chinese football fandom. Furthermore, this chapter also proves that studies on football fandom can be a useful window for observing Chinese society.

The chapter articulates the transition to and evolution of the commercialisation of Chinese professional football. It is periodised based on major turning points. The research yielded two major findings. First, there exists a distinct ‘Chinese way’ of commercialising football. However, it does not indicate that Chinese football doggedly avoided the Western governance model. For the club governance, Chinese football authorities set about recommending privately operated enterprises, large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. Second, the commercialisation transitions of professional football in China were triggered by exogenous policy shifts, rather than endogenous changes in market structures, resulting in higher horizontal financial fragility than is associated with the commercialisation model adopted in more developed Western markets. The applicability to voluntary football clubs is assessed as well.

This study explores how the effects of youth-oriented values influence the behavioural attitudes towards online conspicuous activities during travel, leading to their further conspicuous consumption travel behaviour.

This study applied a mixed-methods approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 young tourists to extract the youth-oriented value measurement scale. A systematic survey was conducted in a renovated heritage site in China. PLS-SEM analysis was performed on 322 responses to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results of semi-structured interviews supplement seven new items and form a measurement scale of youth-oriented values with 16 items in three dimensions (self-identification, peer-identification and eagerness to change). The results of PLS-SEM analysis reveal that all three youth-oriented values significantly influence attitudes towards information searching and content generation, and these two behavioural attitudes are positively related to continuous conspicuous consumption travel. The openness trait moderates the relationship between self-identification and content generation.

The study contributes to youth tourism research in conspicuous consumption travel behaviour. It provides insights to tourism operators to formulate strategies to develop the young tourist market in a cultural heritage tourism context.

Based on the ability–motivation–opportunity (AMO) model, this research aims to examine the hierarchical impact of high-performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) on the work practices and service performance of hospitality organizations.

Through an extensive analysis of time-lagged, multilevel and multisource data encompassing 721 employees and 153 stores across 17 restaurant brands in Taiwan, this study illuminated the hierarchical impact of HPHRPs in fostering a service-oriented environment.

This study reveals that HPHRPs have a direct positive effect on service performance. It also highlights an exclusive indirect positive impact, indicating that HPHRPs contribute to elevated service performance through the multilevel mediating effect of team engagement. A distinctive aspect of this study is that it identifies service climate as a critical multilevel moderator, strengthening the positive relationship between HPHRPs and team engagement. Additionally, service climate is found to be a key factor that amplifies the indirect multilevel positive effect HPHRPs have on service performance by reinforcing team engagement.

Strategically implementing robust HPHRPs, fostering a stimulating work environment and emphasizing team interaction can help hospitality organizations cultivate workplaces that deliver unparalleled guest experiences.

This study offers a strategic roadmap for the hospitality industry with a comprehensive multilevel HPHRPs framework that is customized to the specific needs of the workforce, and focused on fostering a service climate to maximize the positive outcomes of service excellence.

This chapter examines the ‘embodied turn’ in the study of traditional Chinese sports and identifies issues within this area of research. It introduces new interpretative perspectives and approaches within the framework of bodily sociology to elucidate the link between locally-informed sports practices and the formation of socialized individuals. The chapter categorises the current research into three main themes: self-giving, the creation of bodily value and the construction of national identity through sports. It then integrates these themes with the findings of embodied sociology. The chapter compiles and analyzes the existing literature on traditional Chinese sports culture from both Chinese and international scholars, offering insights into the status, rationale and challenges of bodily sociological research. By contextualising the concept of the embodied turn in traditional Chinese sports culture – through concepts such as self-givenness, self-techniques, the generation of value and the creation of collective memory – the chapter discusses the impact of bodily sociology on cultural research. The chapter advocates for further bodily sociological studies of Chinese sports culture, which could enhance the understanding of Chinese studies among Western scholars and contribute to a genuine embodied turn in this field of study. Providing one of the initial explorations of embodied studies in traditional Chinese sports, the chapter reveals a transition from broad cultural interpretations and symbolic, structuralist sociology to a phenomenological approach in sports cultural studies. It posits that the bodily sociology approach is beneficial for sports studies although current research has not yet fully realized the embodied turn.