Jaime Xiao argues that China’s totalising state can build semiconductor fabs, EVs, and high-speed rail, but it suffocates the one industry that needs unplanned space: football. He uses the 1927 Lee Wai-Tong tour of Australia as proof that a fractured China once fielded a competitive team, then explains why today’s tracked-and-funnelled middle class can never produce one, and why he would still take the fabs.