The National Development and Reform Commission recently announced that 16,150 public football fields have been built throughout the country over the past five years, achieving 81 percent of the nation's goal to build 20,000 by 2020. The football fields are part of a long-term development plan for China's football industry, to be carried out from 2016 to 2050.

Zhejiang province must build 815 football fields by 2020, and by the end of last year, it had already built 743, more than 90 percent of the target.

At the end of 2015, the province had only slightly more than 300 public football fields, but that number tripled to 1,086 by the end of 2019.

The growth was mainly due to huge investments from private companies in recent years, according to the provincial sports department. The department has also given significant support to private enterprises in terms of land and supporting facilities, among other things.