On November 17, 2015, a celebrity mouthpiece named Ran Xiongfei posted a video on his personal social media platform, revealing an unknown past event. In the video, he revealed that the then Hebei Huaxia Happiness, the predecessor of Hebei, and its head coach, Li Tie, were charged by the Dalian Football Association (DFA) for allegedly being involved in a match-fixing scandal in the second five rounds of the 2015 First Division season.
Ran Xiongfei continued in the video, "It was at the end of 2015, the Dalian Football Association urgently held a press conference and commissioned lawyers to draft two statements. One was in response to Hebei Huaxia Happiness allegedly buying out opponents in the last five rounds of matches in order to conduct match-fixing; the other was in response to a real-name report by Li Tie, who was the head coach of Huaxia Happiness at the time. It is reported that this real-name report may have been dealt with later by the CFA."
He also mentioned, "In the last five rounds of that season, Hebei Huaxia Happiness managed to beat their opponents and eventually managed to advance to the second place in the Central League. Dalian, on the other hand, was unfortunate to finish in third place and missed out on promotion to the Chinese Super League."
