Local leagues remain tarnished by an anti-corruption drive that swept up dozens of players and officials in recent years, and fans remain wary of a team dumped in the first round of the last two tournaments.
All that aside, the youthful national squad competing in Australia has provided genuine cause for optimism, stringing together encouraging results in the lead-up under French coach Alain Perrin.
Perrin's first match in charge was an uninspiring 3-1 loss to Iraq in March which, ironically, was enough to secure their place in the Asian Cup.
Since then, 97th-ranked China have lost only one of their 10 matches, albeit against a succession of similarly modest opponents.
They face a difficult group, drawn with North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, but not an insurmountable one and can reasonably be tipped as a dark horse to make the last four.
Whether the very raw squad can get any further than that will be the real test. Captain and 2013 Asian Player of the Year Zheng Zhi is the only player aged over 30.
"The players' age is not important to me... I'm not looking at their ID cards, only their performance and attitude," Chinese media quoted Perrin as saying in December.
Zheng, a midfielder from south China's powerful Guangzhou Evergrande, is joined by six of his club team mates for the Jan. 9-31 tournament.
They include striker Gao Lin, who will also be expected to guide the youthful line-up and provide a key path to goal for a side that failed to score in recent draws against Palestine and Honduras.
China has played at 10 Asian Cups, their first in 1976, and were runner-up for the first time in 1984. As with their last two tournaments, a first-round exit would draw fierce recrimination back home.
With Chinese soccer long beset by corruption and match-fixing scandals, a good performance by the national team could be a stepping stone for the nation of 1.3 billion to rejuvenate its footballing potential and overhaul the ailing system.
The anti-corruption drive since 2009 has jailed or punished at least nine officials, four judges, 13 footballers or coaches and 17 club workers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is an avid football fan and has spoken in the past of "three wishes" for China; to qualify for another World Cup since their first and only appearance at the 2002 finals, to host a World Cup and to eventually win one.
Those wishes all remain pipe dreams for now.
(Editing by Ian Ransom and John O'Brien)
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