Im not sure what any of that has to do with China and football? Sport like football just isnt that big of a deal here and thats not going to change overnight. Sport in general is not a huge priority. The government can force kids into academies but until every kid in the street is kicking a ball around in their free time it wont make much difference. Cultural shifts like that take generations.
Then why did you bring it up ! You stated the one child policy was part of the issue - I corrected your uninformed / misleading assertion. The children are never going to be kicking the ball around on every street corner (as if that is even possible here) - that tradition has already disappeared from the UK and probably most other '1st World' countries.
And with a population the size of China's that's irrelevant anyway if we put it into perspective .... England (40,000 clubs ... 2m registered players ca. 3.33% of the population), Germany 32,000+ clubs (6.5m registered players, ca. 8.1% of the population), Argentina 3,337 clubs .... 332,000 registered players, ca. 0.007% of the population. China's population ca. 1.6 - 1.8B, so to get to the same number of participation as England they only need roughly 0.000125% of the population to play. If we use
FIFA's figures (FIFA Big Count 2006 pdf) China has more people playing football (26m) than any other country in the world (and that was in 2006 !), so obviously there is very a strong grass roots, but a lack of structure and a lack of quality coaching/training to promote and improve those talented players. For interest 10th is Russia with 6m and England doesn't make the Top 10.
Wiki : Football has always been among the more popular amateur team sports for recreation in China. High schools often have football facilities, some of which are rented on weekends to local amateur teams to organise matches. It is also the most popular sport to watch on television, with large international tournaments such as the World Cup and the European Championships, as well as major European leagues receiving widespread coverage.
There's only three things that matter in China with regard to sport ; nationalism, money and fame (though I should tip my hat at a growing 4th - fitness awareness). The Govt. handles the promotion and training of those fitting the first criteria, the second and third are easily promoted to the masses by information dissemination. Here's an example, when I first came to China (20 years ago) golf was virtually unheard of, there were only a handful of courses in the whole country (I ran corporate leagues for 10 years as a way of promoting my business) ... however bringing the Asian Tour and then the European Tour and then massive events like the HSBC (with the world's top players) ignited the game here. Everyone had soon heard of Tiger Woods (or simply 'Tiger' to most) and then every practice range and course (there were soon many many more) was full to bursting .... with children driven on by their fanatical parents. Their top players are now knocking on the door and ahave numerous Top 10 finishes in LPGA & European Ladies' events and the men are not far behind. The numbers of participation in golf are miniscule as a % of the population (it is an extremely expensive sport here, as in Japan and Korea).
So it's not difficult to see something similar happening with football, they now have Govt. support (vital), the money, the numbers, and now they are bringing in good foreign players and top coaches and managers. Though in truth it may well take a generation, or maybe a little less, to see them evolve into a nation challenging for trophies. Growth can be exponential, look at computing, science, medicine, space travel whatever you like, if you throw enough money at it, but at the worst you are going to make rapid progress.
With the Govt. behind China's football it's naive to think that they won't soon start to make serious improvement, which will in turn generate greater interest and greater involvement. All that said I'm also not so naive to think that progress will be linear, there may be many twists & turns on this road, look at the potential for golf's demise now that the Govt. have disenfranchised it. This is still China after all !