According to the agency, Chinese fans purchased more than 40,000 tickets for the matches, which placed them ninth among the 2018 FIFA World Cup fan countries. The interest of the Chinese in this game has been annually growing: at the 2002 championship in Japan and South Korea - the only time when the Chinese team qualified for the final - there were not more than 50,000 fans from China at the stadium, the agency reported.

BEIJING, June 15. /TASS/. More than 100,000 Chinese fans have arrived in Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Despite the absence of the China team at the tournament, Chinese fans are demonstrating "unprecedented football enthusiasm," Xinhua News Agency reported.

"I cannot leave the country for a long term to attend all the matches," Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese fan Tang Bin as saying. "Still, I don’t want to skip the matches of my favorite teams - Spain and Germany." He also noted that the trip to Russia cost him in total 50,000 yuans (about $8,000). "In my opinion, it [the trip] is worth these costs," Tang Bin concluded.

The main football event of this year is attracting not just Chinese fans, but also representatives from different areas - seven companies from China are sponsors of the event. One of them - Dalian Wanda - is FIFA’s official partner.

Other, smaller, producers from China are also contributing to the World Cup. According to the report, the Hubei province (Central China) sent more than 100,000 spicy crawfishes for the football fans.

The World Cup will run from June 14 to July 15 at 12 stadiums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Sochi and Rostov-on-Don.