In the mid-1800s, English textile makers eyed China and drooled over the fortunes to be made if every man in this teeming country added just one more inch to his shirttails.

Now, Oregon basketball entrepreneur Bruce O'Neil is looking to this land of budding sports nuts with his own hoop dreams: what if 200,000 Chinese coaches a year took his online training course, at US$40 (HK$312) a pop?

"It's going to be a very big moneymaker,'' O'Neil predicted about the website that his for-profit United States Basketball Academy plans to unveil in the next six months.

Since the days of Marco Polo, business interests have coveted the nation's consumer market and have dreamt of making a killing. Now it's the sports world's turn.

Behind the star power of Yao Ming, the National Basketball Association fired up Chinese fans with its brand of hoops and hoopla, staging exhibition games recently at packed stadiums in Shanghai and Beijing as a homecoming for the 2-metre-29-centimetre icon, who plays for the Houston Rockets.

Afterward, league executives were cheering as well.

They came away with plans for doubling the number of stores selling NBA apparel in the country, along with names of Chinese companies interested in becoming sponsors - and had nothing but blue-sky predictions.

"Over the next 20 years, the growth of the NBA in China will mirror or parallel growth in China,'' NBA Commissioner David Stern said.

Although the mainland sports market is fraught with risks and regulatory hurdles, and could take years to develop, companies are driving to the money basket with the NBA and Yao. McDonald's, a corporate sponsor of the league and Yao, is planning to nearly double its stores in China to 1,000 by the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. PepsiCo and Reebok International have deals with the star player, as does Walt Disney, which wants him to help open its Hong Kong theme park next year.

They are being drawn by China's rising middle class and a nationalistic spirit expressed through sport.

Businesses hope that the combination ignites a nascent US$5-billion-a-year China sports market, causing it to explode with growth rivalling the annual US$200 billion spent in the US for anything related to sports.

"It's a very concentrated effort to promote and develop professional sports in China,'' Pepsi vice-president of marketing in China Richard Lee said.

Since Beijing landed the 2008 Summer Games, the nation of chain smokers and street corner board-game buffs has become seriously sports smitten.

Patriotic pride swelled this summer when China's Olympic squad won 32 gold medals in Athens, a record haul for the country.

Meanwhile, the nation is opening the door to international sporting events. Beijing played host to the women's tennis China Open this summer and Shanghai put on the first professional Japanese sumo wrestling match in China in 30 years.

In Shanghai, government officials coughed up US$300 million to build a venue for the Formula One circuit's Chinese Grand Prix.

Earlier this month, another first: a bullfighting festival, with Spanish matadors and Mexican bulls.

Still, nothing has captured the Chinese imagination like basketball, which along with football is considered a global sport.

Introduced to China in the 1890s, shortly after James Naismith nailed up the first peach basket in Massachusetts, the game has inspired millions who play hoops each day on crowded city playgrounds and in dusty countryside fields.

The game was embedded in the Chinese psyche before the NBA started broadcasting here more than a decade ago and its players became widely known.

The NBA has been plugging into basketball's worldwide appeal and taking its show on the road since the late 1980s. Before China, it held games in London, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo and Mexico City.

"What's happened is that sport has entered the global economy in the way that McDonald's or Coke or Nike have,'' Australian National Basketball League commissioner Rick Burton said. "The NBA is one of the best in the world at globalisation.''

Yet for all the hype of the Chinese market, it can be a commercial arena that turns hostile quickly - a lesson that has not been lost on the NBA, said Brook Larmer, author of the upcoming book Operation Yao Ming.

Fraud remains a big complaint, US Embassy officials say. Regulations are vague. Mainland courts often don't uphold Western contracts. It commonly takes years for outsiders to build up guanxi - influence gained through connections - before being deemed a commerce-worthy partner.

Despite impressive middle-class gains, most of China's 1.3 billion people are peasants, and the average annual per capita income just slightly tops US$1,000. That means even in Yao's bustling hometown of Shanghai, few people could afford the NBA ticket prices of US$35 to US$240 for this month's games.

The Chinese government has yet to put a dent in piracy, and a blizzard of knockoffs will create only headaches for the logo-protective NBA.

Perhaps even more daunting are the uncertainties that come with doing business in a communist land where the government controls many aspects of commerce. China has long followed the former Soviet Union model, in which sports was viewed as a national endeavour, supported and dominated by layers of government.

Some analysts and businessmen say the system will change, with the central government turning over its hold on sports to private hands and non-governmental organisations.

For now, though, the sports world must play politics according to the Communist Party rule book, and that can result in some uncomfortable blocked shots, as a consultant for Reebok found out.

The shoe company agreed to fix up a Shanghai public school play yard and pay the school in Yao's hometown US$20,000 a year as a goodwill marketing gesture, Shanghai marketing consultant Terry Rhoads said, who helped broker the sponsorship deal. It even featured the hometown hero in a dedication ceremony last year at the play yard, dubbed Yao's House because it is located next to the gym where NBA scouts first saw the budding star.

But this year, rumours began circulating that the local government wanted to evict Yao's House for a new tennis facility - a consideration local officials recently confirmed, although leaving details vague.

"At first, the feeling was pure shock, disbelief and anger,'' Rhoads said. "Very much an attitude of we're not going to take it. Then we realised - it's China!''

On a grander scale, the NBA and other outside interests must step lightly, as the government-controlled mainland sports establishment realises and exploits the financial potential of its homegrown athletes.

In basketball, the government hopes to make money by remaking the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) into the NBA's image. Earlier this month, it unveiled plans to move the 12-team domestic pro circuit to private ownership by 2015.

Left unanswered, however, was the delicate question of how much the CBA will allow the NBA to cherry-pick its best players.

Indeed, the government's sports ministry had to approve Yao's release from the Shanghai Sharks so he could go to Houston.

Potentially next off the bench to NBA stardom are two young players for the Guandong Tigers: point guard Chen Jianghua and 2m-13cm centre Yi Jianlian.

But they and other Chinese stars still must give up a share of their incomes to the central government and their former domestic teams. And their endorsement deals still pale in comparison to those of athletes from other countries.

NBA officials say they are cautiously optimistic that they can avoid business snares in the Chinese market.

"We can rise above that a little bit easier than other companies, given the love of people here for the game and the growing interest in sports in general throughout China,'' NBA China managing director Mark Fischer said.

"Nobody is going to want to see basketball fail.''

"The NBA is the best league of basketball in the world, has the best players from all over the world, and it could, by the way, earn a lot of money in the field of entertainment,'' basketball fan Wang Shengchun said.

Wang said the key would be changing how the Chinese view their beloved game.

"In China, we can see basketball as a sport,'' he said. "But Americans see basketball as entertainment.

"You can either watch a movie or go to a basketball game.''

And the choice is made easier because of Yao. With a wholesome humility and a new autobiography, he has long marketing coattails.

In China, a vast nation eager to shed its overall sense of inferiority, Yao has become a hit because he has gone toe to toe with the best of the West but retained his Eastern demeanour, author Larmer said.

Eastman Kodak got a taste of Yao power when, as a sponsor of the recent exhibition games, it gave away tickets at some of its 9,000 express stores in China. Sales at those outlets soared during that period, Kodak's chief representative for China Christopher Adams said. "Everybody wanted to see Yao.''

The NBA is televised on 14 outlets in China, and this year the number of weekly live game telecasts will double to four on the state's official CCTV network. And the government is paying the league, although not a huge sum, Larmer said.

"Without Yao, none of this would have happened,'' he said.

Meanwhile, NBA officials say they have been approached by Chinese companies interested in becoming corporate sponsors - not to sell to Americans but as part of a sort of boomerang strategy to influence mainland consumers.

And even Yao gave a ringing endorsement of the NBA style when he was asked about the commercial effect of his return home in the exhibition games.

"As for the marketing of NBA products, I believe that's one aspect that Chinese businessmen should learn from,'' he said.