Song Kai elected new president of Chinese Football Association

BEIJING - Senior sports official Song Kai was elected president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) at its 12th membership conference here on Monday.

The 58-year-old Song, head of the Administration of Sport in northeast China's Liaoning Province, has been working as vice head of the preparatory group for the CFA election since June.

"We will try our best to build a more united, more hardworking, more open, more transparent and more courageous CFA in the future," Song noted.

Sun Wen, Yuan Yongqing, Yang Xu and Xu Jiren were elected as vice presidents of the CFA, with Chinese women's football legend Sun being the only vice president who remains in her position from the 11th membership conference.

The 50-year-old Yuan, also named the CFA secretary-general, had past experiences of serving in the Chinese Basketball Association. Yang, also president of the Chinese Softball Association, is tasked with supervising China's professional football leagues in the future. Xu is a senior sports journalist from Xinhua News Agency.

In addition to the president and vice presidents, the new 20-member executive committee elected by the conference includes women's star footballer Wang Shuang, former men's football team captain Zheng Zhi, and representatives from Chinese Super League (CSL) clubs, schools, local football associations and other football-related sectors.

Earlier this year, Du Zhaocai, former deputy head of the General Administration of Sport of China, former CFA president Chen Xuyuan, as well as several other senior Chinese football officials, were under probe for taking bribes. ■