During the tournament, a bottle of beer that costs less than two euros in a convenience store may sell for more than three times that price in a bar. Yet people still arrive early, sometimes an hour or two before the match has started, just to secure a seat.

　　Why are consumers willing to pay the premium? Clearly, the beer comes with something that a convenience store cannot provide: the feeling of witnessing something together, the warmth of high-fiving a stranger, the roar of an entire bar after a goal and the subtle sense at the end of the night that "we have just been through something together."

　　This is one of the questions raised by the idea of humanistic economics: While pursuing economic growth, can economic activity also strengthen social connections, create cultural meaning and enrich people"s emotional lives? It looks at the possibility of economic activity becoming more human-centered, while human and cultural needs themselves become part of economic value creation.

　　A World Cup night in a Belgian beer bar offers a vivid example on a small scale.

　　Here, consumption and the production of emotional value are two sides of the same coin. People pay more for a glass of beer not only because of its taste or alcoholic effect, but because they are buying access to a shared experience that cannot be recreated on the sofa at home. And that experience is precisely what digital consumption cannot fully replace.

　　This form of human-centered economic activity is built around shared interests, physical presence and emotional participation. It is not unique to European football culture.

　　If we turn our attention back to China, striking similarities appear.