After college, he became a professional player for the J-League's Kawasaki Frontale.

Within two years, Qingdao Sifang says, it had absorbed Kawasaki's technology.

The agreement included what other Japanese companies now condemn as a too-generous transfer of technology from Kawasaki to the Qingdao Sifang unit.

Given his penchant for fast motorbikes (he owns a Kawasaki), Valentino Rossi may have been more apt.

A 9-kilometer-long hybrid of a bridge and a tunnel called the Tokyo Bay Aqua Line link the cities of Kawasaki and Kisarazu across Japan' s Tokyo Bay.