Fans of the Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club in the U.K. are displaying Taiwan flags at protests against their Chinese owners Fosun. The flags have been seen inside and outside of stadiums, as well as on social media.
Wolves are already facing the prospect of relegation after not winning a single game out of their first 15, and fans are holding Fosun responsible. The Taiwanese flags, sometimes combined with the Wolves logo in inventive ways, started appearing outside games last month, and can now easily be found online.
Wolves fans held an organized protest outside Molineux Stadium on December 8, refusing to take their seats until 15 minutes after the game began. Several Taiwan flags were visible in the crowd. Some supporters even brought them inside the stadium, despite the club having recently updated its flags and banners policy.
“It’s not a good look when you whack a Wolves badge on a Taiwan flag when you’ve got Chinese owners and it’s embarrassing for them,” said Harry Mansell, a YouTuber who addressed the situation in a video on December 4. Mansell thinks this is happening because Fosun have become totally unresponsive to fans. “It’s like they’ve buried their head in the sand and they don’t want to listen to fans’ concerns any longer.”
Fosun bought Wolves in 2016. Under new ownership, the club achieved promotion to the Premier League in 2018 and had initial success there, but since 2020 has been on a downward trend. After Covid-19 hit, the club saw far less investment, in new players and into the stadium grounds. This was part of a much larger trend, with the Chinese government effectively restricting Chinese investment into European football.
If Wolves are relegated at the end of this season, the perceived value of the club would drop significantly. Sale rumors have abounded with every loss as this prospect grows stronger. The combination of this with fan dissatisfaction at the direction of the club, which has now boiled into active protests, is potentially a potent one. But Fosun would have to find a buyer.
The first use of the Taiwanese flag is widely credited to fan Keith Sutton, who said that it is “quite a provocative symbol to people of China” and he had wanted Fosun to take notice after what he described as four years of managed decline.
“The enemy of your enemy is our friend,” said Mike Petalengro, another early flag protester, adding that he has many Taiwanese friends from previous travels and has a flag that was flown in Taiwan. Petalengro said that Fosun, “basically an offshoot of the Chinese Government,” had decimated his club.
The South Bank, Molineux — a fan site on Facebook — defended the use of the flag against apparent attacks: “Conflating criticism of the CCP, or discomfort with a Premier League club being owned by interests tied to an oppressive one-party state, with racism against Chinese individuals is a common rhetorical tactic used to shut down debate.”
The appearance of its flag at these protests is interesting for Taiwan, if nothing else. And if there are any Taiwanese billionaires out there reading this, now might be an interesting time to consider buying a football club!
For China, this whole episode shows once again the drag that the reputation of the CCP has on its ability to project soft power. And it is perhaps a little ironic that Chinese sports diplomacy is failing at Wolves, just as Chinese diplomats failed at wolf warriorism.
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