Website www.transfermarkt.com estimates, and in the world of international transfers these can only be estimates, that the CSL's 16 clubs spent a combined $411 million in the Chinese transfer window, which closed on Tuesday.
The result is that over the next nine months the skills of players such as Carlos Teves, Demba Ba, Oscar, Hulk, Ramires and Gervinho will be entertaining Chinese fans from subtropical Guangzhou in the south to Changchung in the rust belt of the northeast.
The quality on the bench is only a little less marked with Andre Villas-Boas at Shanghai SIPG, Manuel Pellegrini at Hebei China Fortune and Felix Magath at Shandong Luneng.
It is, though, Luiz Felipe Scolari, the World Cup-winning former Brazil coach, who will be favourite to land the title for the third year in a row at Guangzhou Evergrande in November.
The southern powerhouse were the first club to invest serious money in their team and the return has been six successive CSL titles, three of the first four coming with another World Cup winner in Marcello Lippi at the helm.
League and cup double winners last season, Scolari's side opened their domestic campaign with a 1-0 victory in the Super Cup against last year's CSL runners-up Jiangsu Suning in front of 50,000 fans in Chongqing two weeks ago.
While Guangzhou begin their title defence with a tough home fixture against Beijing Guoan, Jiangsu's trip to Shanghai on Sunday is perhaps more representative of the new era in Chinese football.
The Nanjing-based side, who feature former Chelsea midfielder Ramires in the middle of the park and Colombia striker Roger Martinez up front, will come up against Shanghai Shenhua's multi-million dollar Argentine signing Tevez.
Although Tevez would seem certain to start up front, Shenhua's Uruguayan coach Gus Poyet can select only three of the five foreign players in his squad after a rule change rushed through in January.
The change was a response to concerns that clubs were "burning money" in the pursuit of success and that the influx of foreign players would act to the detriment of local talent.
The driving force behind the spending was the stated desire of President Xi Jinping to improve the national team and massively expand the Chinese sports market.
That drive has also resulted in the acquisition by billionaire Chinese entrepreneurs and companies of foreign clubs like Inter Milan and a string of sporting rights.
There have been domestic benefits too, however, with the CSL netting $1.3 billion from tycoon Li Ruigang's China Media Capital for a five-year deal for Chinese TV rights last October.
That was a far cry from the early days of the CSL when the league struggled to find title sponsors because of match-fixing scandals, and from 2008 when the state broadcaster pulled the plug on the league after a mass brawl between Beijing and Tianjin players.
(Writing by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney; editing by Sudipto Ganguly/Amlan Chakraborty)
