While retaining the titles was a great achievement for the Chinese national team, the question of whether China’s dominance of the sport arises again throughout the table tennis community. Since 2005, China has held possession of all the titles in the sport with Austrian Werner Schlager temporarily breaking the dominance in 2003 by winning the men’s singles title.

As the ITTF and the China Table Tennis Association (CTTA) have expressed several times before in interviews, China’s domination of table tennis is not healthy for the sport. This has been talked about for years, but only brought more into light back in 2009 after the last championships in Yokohama, Japan.

While the ITTF and CTTA have admitted that China’s domination of table tennis is detrimental to the sport, the question is what solutions have they put forward to rectify this problem? If you watched these championships and past, you probably have seen various Chinese table tennis players representing other nations such as Spain, Austria and the United States. However, the naturalization of players just so they can play for other nations is not a long term solution to the problem and, as you can see from the various competitions, it still has not worked in their favor.

The CTTA has implemented a program that invites foreign table tennis players to China in order to receive training. Though it has just recently started, it is still too early tell whether any of the foreign players will be able to transfer this training into winning tournaments against their Chinese competitors. Perhaps results from this training scheme will not be seen for several months.

Here is another question that comes to mind about China’s dominance in table tennis. Can they be blamed for the lack in parity in the sport? This writer believes the answer to this question is no.

If one looks at the setup between the Chinese team and their counterparts, there are stark differences. For one, the Chinese national team is setup so that the top players are trained in the national team rather than at the provincial level. Therefore, all of their focus and energy is solely on training and playing for the national team. Of course China, like their counterparts, has an established professional league since 1998, but it is merely used for the top players to maintain their sharpness when international competitions are not being played. So, playing for the national team is their full-time job.

Whereas the national team is the sole focus of the top players in China, it seems that commitments to club teams hinder the progress of non-Chinese players on the international stage. A combination of national league matches and table tennis’ form of the European Champions League prevent some of the world’s top players outside of China from participating in the various ProTour events held throughout the year.

Also, as ITTF President Adham Sharara stated in an interview with Xinhua, there is a lack of competitiveness within teams from other countries. Most of the top players in Europe and other Asian countries do not have competition within their own ranks that is pushing them day in and day out during training.

So, where does the real reform begin in making table tennis more competitive and attractive to the masses again? The real answers are going to have to come from within the other table tennis federations.

Wang Hao celebrates as he wins the men's singles.

China’s table tennis team continued its winning fashion in the 2009 World Championships in Yokohama. The team, which claimed all the four golds in the Beijing Games, dampened competitors’ title expectations by securing all the semi-final seats in the tournament.

Li Ping and Cao Zhen defeated Mu Zi and Zhang Jike to win the mixed doubles title on Sunday, while Wang Hao and Chen Qi, the no.1 seeds, edged out compatriots Ma Long and Xu Xin to win the men’s doubles. Guo Yue and Li Xiaoxia won the country’s 11th successive victory in the women’s doubles.

Zhang Yining, China’s new table tennis queen after Deng Yaping and Wang Nan, defeated Guo Yue to win gold  in the women’s singles this afternoon. And Wang Hao, the world number one  in ITTF ranking, swept Wang Liqin 4-0 in the men’s singles final.

That China won all the golds and silvers in the tournament doesn’t seem so exciting to the country’s sports officials.

“If one team keeps winning all at the world championships and Olympics, table tennis’ Olympic future is in danger,” said Yao Zhenxu, a vice chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association in an interview. “In recent world championships or Olympics, semifinals are always more exciting than finals because they are all Chinese affairs.”

The ITTF said last week that they want to alter the schedule for the 2012 London Olympics. The new proposal, which opposed by China, will see singles matches played ahead of the team events as “it’s fairer to the players who do not take part in the team event.”

Source:

• Sky Sports: Golds for China  - 11th successive women’s double title for Chinese
• Xinhua: As China won all, Chinese official worried about table tennis’ Olympic future

Photo:  ITTF

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Chinese Badminton Association once formed a league back in 1999, which went down in 2003 due to a failure of generating profits. Aside from international matches organized by Badminton World Federation, local players in China nationwide now can only play in two tournaments organized annually by the association: National Champions Tournament (全国冠军赛) and National Tournament (全国锦标赛), which is, no doubt, far from good for the development of young talents.

Li Yongbo, the head coach of Chinese National Badminton Team, told press recently that the association had decided to kick off a new badminton league next year even before the Olympics. “We’ll try to replace the tournaments by a league in 2009, and to make it bigger should we achieve our goal in 2010.”

Can Li and his fellow colleagues reach their goal? It’s reported that the association is looking for a sponsorship of about RMB 5-6 million to start. But if they are to follow the route of Chinese Table Tennis League, where clubs’ revenues are mainly generated by touring the country and getting bonuses from generous local private business owners, we’ll be curious to see how long they can make it under the current economic conditions.

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