With no team in World Cup, China fans rally around a red card-happy referee

With its national team failing to qualify again for the World Cup, China's football fans have adopted a referee as the country's star representative at the tournament, which begins on Thursday.

Ma Ning, 46, has sparked viral memes and attracted sponsorships from major Chinese brands, including tech company Lenovo and electronics giant Hisense.

Ma is known for his stern style. At a 2015 match in Shanghai, he dished out nine yellow cards and three red ones – a milestone in his refereeing career that earned him the nickname "card master".

This will be his second World Cup appearance since his debut in Qatar four years ago, when he served as a fourth official who assisted the referee off pitch.

Topics related to Ma have generated millions of views on RedNote and other Chinese social media platforms, with some users rooting for him, and others lamenting about the state of sport in China.

"We have Ma Ning, who do you have?" one RedNote user wrote.

"Other countries get to watch their own teams play, while we'll watch our referee issue cards," another declared.

Ma is now in Miami for a 10-day officials' camp, where he is joined by two other Chinese representatives, assistant referee Zhou Fei and video assistant referee Fu Ming.

Both Zhou's and Fu's roles involve supporting the main referees from the sidelines.

Ma has been certified as a referee by FIFA, the global governing body for football, since 2011. He also lectures at the Nanjing Sport Institute.

To document his upcoming World Cup journey, he started an account on RedNote, China's Instagram-like platform, two weeks ago, and has readily gained 197,000 followers.

His first post on the platform showed him fishing out a little red book from the front pocket of his referee tee, a reference to the platform's Chinese name and how he's known for handing out red cards, which expel a player from a match for severe violations.

A subsequent post was a video clip showing him packing his suitcase and working out in the gym in preparation for his World Cup duties. The clip, featuring dramatic music, includes a Lenovo tablet among other products.

"I take up this appointment with confidence and composure. World Cup, here we come," he wrote in the caption.

China has failed to qualify for the World Cup since its first appearance at the tournament in 2002, when it was eliminated in the group stage without scoring a single point.

Over the last two decades, Chinese football has been plagued with a funding crisis and widespread corruption which have resulted in lifetime bans for some players, referees and club officials.