Liverpool target Alex Teixeira joins Chinese club Jiangsu Suning for £38m

The Shakhtar attacker, for whom Liverpool had a £24 million offer declined last month, will link up with fellow Brazilian and former Chelsea midfielder Ramires at the club.

Ramires sealed his move eight days ago.

"Shakhtar Donetsk and Jiangsu Suning FC have agreed on all the necessary formalities for the transfer of Alex Teixeira to the Chinese club," the Ukrainian club said in a statement. "Transfer fee for the Brazilian midfielder is 50 million euros."

ESPN Brazil had previously quoted Shakhtar manager Mircea Lucescu as saying: "We have agreed the sale of Alex Teixeira to China.

"But we will wait a bit to finalise it due to the situation with Luiz Adriano.

"But it's all sorted on our side."

AC Milan forward Adriano, a former Shakhtar player himself, saw his own move to Jiangsu Suning fall through last month due to 11th hour financial complications - but there were no such issues with Teixeira's move.

The fee paid for the Brazilian, once formally ratified by all parties, will be a new Asian transfer record, eclipsing the £31.7 million Guangzhou Evergrande paid for Atletico Madrid's Jackson Martinez two days ago.

Jiangsu Suning are coached by former Chelsea defender Dan Petrescu.

Liverpool were strongly interested in signing Teixeira in January, but were ultimately unable to come to an agreement on the transfer fee - with the Chinese interest perhaps inflating Shakhtar's asking price beyond what the Reds felt comfortable offering.

"We said we cannot play this game until the end,“ Klopp revealed recently of negotiations between the two clubs.

"We made offers – I won’t say too much about that but they were realistic, absolutely, with the pluses of it being January, the Premier League, all the pluses you have when you make negotiations with other clubs. But it was a case of ‘if you don’t want it, OK, we can’t change the situation, do what you want'. You have to work respectfully and responsibly.”

The current Chinese boom is a result of the giant TV broadcast deal that was signed towards the end of last season. The deal, believed to be in the region of $1.2 billion (US), has opened up an influx of spending amongst the clubs in the Chinese Super League.

The state broadcaster was outbid by Li Ruigang, the billionaire head of China Media Capital. In previous years, the TV rights for the CSL was only in the region of a paltry $8 million (US).

Other factors exist for the spending drive. Tycoons who run a lot of the clubs in the league, are attempting to both reach for political influence with their clubs' success and to also improve the standing of the league globally. Suning, a general retail company with over 1600 stores in China, posted total revenues in 2014 of over £11bn.

Reports in the English media on Friday claimed that Chelsea had turned down an offer from the club, quoted in some places as being in the region of £60m, for midfielder Oscar.

The Chinese transfer window closes on February 26.

Teixeira's impending move is another example of the growing strength of the Chinese game - an economic superpower in a wider context, and that muscle is now translating to football, which will surely have far-reaching consequences on the international game if the interest and investment is sustained.

Neutral fans (and Liverpool fans in particular) may be incredulous that Teixeira, having been on the verge of a move to Anfield, would even consider going to China - why not wait until the summer, when another Premier League or European move would almost certainly be on the table? - but he will be one of a number of stars in an emerging market with room for lucrative growth.

The current perception might be that China is becoming what the Russian league was a few years ago, the go-to destination for over-hyped mercenaries willing to put up with a lower standard of football and less global exposure as long as the pay cheque is the biggest on offer. But that view may soon come to look outdated: the Chinese league now has a number of big names but has also snapped up some of the best young talent in Brazil - offering a compelling profile to a league on the rise.

If the attraction of the Premier League is the money and the attention, then who is to say the Chinese league - with seemingly more money to offer right now, and more than a billion potential domestic viewers watching - cannot offer the same?

For clubs like Liverpool, however, this will serve as a warning. When it comes to the big talents in the transfer market, even they might find they struggle to compete financially with what is on offer elsewhere.