The Beijing summer Olympics captivated virtually all of China last year, yet when it comes to professional sports, it's another story. Scandals bring embarrassment regularly. Last summer a professional soccer player was barred for life after pushing a referee to the ground after a 20-minute melee.  Yet Lou Ming is an optimist. His office is full of awards and photos from sports events. His family owns the Guangsha Lions from Hangzhou of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). China's top hoops league, he says, increasingly attracts strong owners such as the NBA's Yao Ming, who bought a Shanghai team in July. Says Lou, "Professional sports in China have a great future for fans and entrepreneurs."  China's sports landscape has changed greatly since Lou, 36, first became interested. He started playing basketball when he was a soldier with time to kill and recalls limited chances to watch sports. By contrast, he says, young and old alike these days can tune into sports 24-7 in China on cable TV and on the Internet. These viewers see unprecedented gains by Chinese in world sports. China's hosting of the Summer Olympics, its first-place finish in winning gold medals and government support for the development of a sports industry have fueled a raft of commercial investments and marketing breakthroughs.  The Lou family's Guangsha Group, a construction group controlled by his father, Lou Zhongfu, who is worth $650 million and ranks No. 146 on this year's China Rich List, began its support of sports in the 1990s by sponsoring soccer exhibitions. The company's biggest move was into basketball in April 2005, when it hooked up with the CBA.  Lou himself hired the first coach and attends the team's home games. In 2009 the Lions were 28--22 in the CBA, an improvement from its .500 record last year and its miserable .200 in 2006. "Like our league, we have been making progress over time," Lou says. The total TV audience for CBA games in the past season increased to 600 million viewers, from 350 million a year earlier. Guangsha's franchise, however, remains a tiny part of the group's overall worth.  Lou says there's no exaggerating the influence of Yao Ming on the development of the sports business in China. "People skipped work to watch Yao's Houston Rockets when they made the second round of the playoffs this year even though Yao was hurt and didn't play. In the past the public stayed up like that only for the World Cup," he explains.  The way Lou sees it, Yao has succeeded because he's a classic example of Chinese-overseas cooperation: If he didn't have success and a lot of fans at home in the first place, he couldn't have gone overseas. And if he hadn't made it in the NBA, he couldn't have become popular worldwide. "China today is too short of these kind of superstars," Lou says.  The Chinese Basketball Association and sports in general in China need more participation by entrepreneurs like Yao. "Without full ownership there isn't enough commitment to field good players," Lou says. "For Guangsha, every penny we spend is our own money. Better management will lead to better teams."  Lou thinks more Chinese will invest in sports teams abroad, just as two Chinese recently invested in the National Basketball Association's Cleveland Cavaliers. "We would be very interested in investing in the NBA if an opportunity presented itself," he says.  In addition to our list of China's 40 Richest, we've again collaborated with our partners at FORBES CHINA magazine to compile a list of the 400 richest people in China. In the following pages we highlight business sectors that have contributed to the 400. For the complete China Rich List, go to www.forbes.com/china.
Lou Ming and his family, owners of basketball team Guangsha Lions from Hangzhou, are betting on China's sporting future.