Eleven years after hanging up his spikes, Liu Xiang is finally facing the question of "post-retirement placement" that every athlete under China's state sports system must answer, and it has put him at odds with the Shanghai Sports Bureau. What exactly is going on behind the scenes?
As an Olympic champion, Liu Xiang appears to have retired in everyone's eyes, spending his years since then in a free and easy manner, travelling the world. However, according to sources, he never formally completed the personnel-level retirement procedures, which is why the issue of "retirement placement" has now come to the fore.
This problem coming to light now has actually been foreseeable for some time. From October 18 to December 20, 2024, the Third Inspection Group of the Municipal Party Committee conducted an inspection of the Party Leadership Group of the Shanghai Sports Bureau. On February 24, 2025, the inspection feedback was given, with one notable statement being that athlete management was "lenient, loose, and soft." The feedback clearly pointed out shortcomings in the management of athletes who remain on the payroll but are not actively training, and required a review of existing personnel, standardisation of the entire process from suspension of training to formal retirement, annual updates to the list of such personnel, follow-up visits, and promotion of retirement procedure processing.
By February 2026, the Shanghai Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervisory Commission publicly released a notice on the progress of rectification by the Shanghai Sports Bureau Party Leadership Group, clearly listing the related issues as part of the rectification efforts. Looking at the larger picture, the state system has been inspecting and rectifying the problem of "being on the payroll but not showing up for work."
Similar to Liu Xiang, fellow Shanghai Olympic diving champion Wu Minxia announced her retirement at the end of 2016 and was elected as a part-time deputy secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League in 2018, a position with no salary, no administrative rank, and not classified as a civil servant. Her affiliation was with the Shanghai Sports Bureau, and for a time she was not required to work in the office, focusing instead on building her personal commercial brand. However, after the 2024 Paris Olympics, Wu Minxia officially took on the role of youth training coach for the Shanghai diving team, beginning her coaching career.
Liu Xiang retired one year earlier than Wu Minxia and had already served as deputy secretary of the Youth League Committee of the Shanghai Sports Bureau (part-time) since 2011, but after his retirement he never again appeared in public in that capacity. In fact, given his outstanding contributions to Shanghai sports, the authorities did not demand or urge Liu Xiang to undergo retirement placement, and Liu Xiang himself revealed in early interviews that he did not like working in an office. So after retiring in 2015, Liu Xiang appeared on several variety shows before gradually fading from the public eye, occasionally posting travel photos on social media.
That is to say, for the past 11 years, Liu Xiang has not been sitting in an office, but due to his past contributions, he has continued to enjoy the salary and benefits associated with his status as an athlete within the state system. However, unlike Shanghai Olympic champions such as Wu Minxia and Zhong Tianshi, Liu Xiang has rarely appeared at major events hosted by the Shanghai Sports Bureau since announcing his retirement, which led to public speculation that he had already left the system entirely.
Currently, the Shanghai Sports Bureau is undergoing management-level personnel adjustments, and the rectification measures previously required by the inspection team have become increasingly urgent. The Shanghai Competitive Sports Training and Management Center, as the governing body for frontline athletes, has communicated with Liu Xiang regarding retirement placement, which is why Liu Xiang took to Weibo to ask whether he should choose a "buyout" or becoming a coach.
Starting in 2017, the Shanghai Sports Bureau has held an annual retirement ceremony for outstanding Shanghai athletes. Based on reports from the past decade, these outstanding athletes have two statutory placement paths. Approximately 70% of outstanding retired athletes choose organisation-based placement, entering units within the state system, though not everyone is directly given an establishment post — positions depend on available vacancies. Most choose to stay within the sports system, taking on roles as coaches or in related management positions, while a smaller number transfer to other public institutions, universities, or state-owned enterprises.
Many other athletes choose independent career paths, receiving a one-time financial compensation — what Liu Xiang referred to as a "buyout." The one-time economic compensation includes a basic settlement fee, compensation for years of athletic service, and performance bonuses. Given Liu Xiang's athletic achievements and career history, if he were to choose the one-time compensation, it would likely be at the million-yuan level. The one-time compensation for retired athletes is generally funded by public fiscal budgets, with shortfalls covered by sports lottery public welfare funds. In recent years, more and more outstanding retired athletes in Shanghai have chosen independent career paths. According to public reports, spending on athlete support funds and one-time compensation for independent retirement choices reached as high as 7 million yuan in 2022 alone.
The sudden retirement placement decision likely caught Liu Xiang somewhat off guard. After the Shanghai Sports Bureau responded publicly, Liu Xiang posted on Weibo: "According to regulations? Which regulation is this? It's been ten years and now you want to place me? Why don't you divide the advertising fees according to regulations?" This somewhat emotional response has complicated matters, with many online suggesting that Liu Xiang's commercial endorsements after retirement should still be shared with the Shanghai Sports Bureau.
According to multiple sources, after Liu Xiang retired in 2015, none of his commercial endorsements or variety show appearance fees were shared with his coaching support team, sports associations, or local development units. To that end, in 2016, Liu Xiang registered the Liu Xiang (Shanghai) Sports Studio, which was dissolved in July 2020. Similarly, after Wu Minxia retired, her commercial development was handled by an agency, with no requirement to hand over a share of proceeds. Multiple media outlets have estimated that Liu Xiang's career earnings exceeded 500 million yuan.
His commercial income started at just 1.6 million yuan in 2003, peaked in 2007 when he was the most-watched athlete in China, earning up to 160 million yuan. Before the Beijing Olympics, he held as many as 14 commercial endorsement deals. Even in 2008, despite his injury and withdrawal, Liu Xiang earned 130 million yuan on the strength of a strong first half of the year. During a low point in 2011, he still earned 18.25 million yuan, and over the following two years his commercial income consistently exceeded 20 million yuan per year.
At the London Olympics, Liu Xiang had as many as 17 sponsors, but the contracts with these companies ranged in length. Apart from his lifetime deal with Nike, some endorsement contracts lasted until 2014. These contracts also contained harsh compensation clauses. So when Liu Xiang announced his retirement in 2015, he retained only his lifetime ambassadorship with Nike, while the other sponsorship agreements had essentially expired. At one time, Liu Xiang's commercial development was the biggest source of income for the Athletics Management Center, leading to the joke that one Liu Xiang could support the entire centre.
In 2007, the Athletics Management Center revealed that Liu Xiang's commercial income was split as follows: 50% to himself, 15% to his coaches and team, 20% to the Shanghai Sports Bureau, and 15% to the Athletics Management Center. The shares for the local sports bureau and the management center were both invested in athletics development. This was the allocation standard implemented by the center based on the State Sports General Administration's 2006 Document No. 78, the "Notice on Trial Management of Commercial Activities of National Team Athletes by Contract."
During the London Olympics cycle, Liu Xiang's commercial income share did increase, with him receiving 65% of commercial proceeds after agency fees were deducted. It must be acknowledged that the commercial development surrounding Liu Xiang provided considerable support for the development of Chinese athletics, though the "Xiang Team," which frequently made elementary mistakes in commercial development, also failed to fully unlock Liu Xiang's commercial value. When he announced his retirement, Liu Xiang's only remaining endorsement was his lifetime contract with Nike, but contrary to the widely spread claim of "14 million yuan per year," sources indicate that Liu Xiang's lifetime contract with Nike was only in the seven-figure range annually.
In a sense, Liu Xiang is no different from other outstanding retired athletes. But he is also special — he once represented an era. The weighty gold medal in Athens in 2004 and the world record of 12.88 seconds were a source of pride for Chinese men's athletics and a breakthrough for the Asian community. Alongside Yao Ming, he was a calling card for Shanghai sports and one of the first true superstars in China's sports commercialisation.
When he retired in 2015, he posted on Weibo an article titled "My Track! My Hurdles!" in which he specially thanked the Shanghai Sports Bureau, Shanghai Sports Vocational College, and the Shanghai Athletics Center, saying, "As a Shanghai athlete, I am honoured. You gave me the warmth of home." That farewell was warm-hearted: "I love Shanghai deeply, forever!" Eleven years later, he says, "I never left — not because I didn't want to, but because you never let me go."
With sports management now entering a stage of institutionalisation, standardisation, and refined management, this aligns with the current social environment, but past heroes cannot simply be "formatted" away. How to provide those who dedicated their youth and made enormous contributions to sports with a clear, dignified, and regulation-compliant exit may well be a hurdle that Chinese sports must still clear.