China's football governing body, the Chinese Football Association (CFA), told Xinhua on Wednesday that a series of new regulations including a "salary cap" will be implemented in the Chinese Super League(CSL) and lower professional leagues next season.
Worrying about prohibitively expensive transfer fees and an influx of well-paid foreign players, the CFA says that the "salary cap" plans to include the total expenditure cap of the club and the salary cap of individual players, aiming to contain "irrational" investment and promote healthy and sustainable development of professional leagues.
The specific amount of the "salary cap" will refer to the average investment and players' wages in the J-League and K-League, the CFA said to Xinhua. In addition, the CFA will also launch rules to strength financial review and supervision, eradicating extra signing fees and duplicate contracts, as well as perfecting player labor contract systems.
All the details of new regulations will be officially published after the end of the 2018 season. The "100 percent transfer tax" policy was also introduced at the beginning of the 2018 season. This policy states that clubs spending over 45 million yuan on foreign players must pay the same sum of money to a football development fund as a tax for making the signing. This will be continued in the 2019 season.
