Beijing: Chinese Super League clubs wrapped up a record spending spree on Friday after football transfers worth a world-beating 331 million euros ($365 million) sent the sport into a spin.
With the winter transfer window set to close at midnight, China has smashed the national record no fewer than four times, culminating in Jiangsu Suning's 50-million-euro purchase of Alex Teixeira.
The high-profile hiring of top players for outlandish sums has suddenly put the Chinese Super League on the map at a time when President Xi Jinping is pushing hard to turn China into a footballing power.
China's spending in the January-February window outstripped the English Premier League's 253-million-euro outlay in January, according to figures compiled by industry website Transfermarkt.
It was also more than the next four major European championships combined -- Italy's Serie A, the German Bundesliga, the Primera Division in Spain and France's Ligue 1, Transfermarkt said.
China's national team is ranked a lowly 93rd in the world, but Xi has declared his hopes of the country one day hosting and winning a World Cup, prompting a flood of money into its top professional teams.
More than half of the CSL's total spending came on just six players, the data showed, all of them foreign -- three of them Brazilian -- and mostly coming from European teams.
After Brazil's Teixeira, the second highest purchase was the 42 million euros Asian champions Guangzhou Evergrande paid Atletico Madrid for Colombian forward Jackson Martinez.
Overall, the CSL's 163 transfers average fee came out at 2.03 million euros, Transfermarkt data showed -- significantly more than the 1.46 million euro mean in England's Premier League.
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