China has lorded over the table tennis realm for longer than any of their challengers care to remember, but these days there's a whiff of panic emanating from the masters who sense they may be witnessing the beginning of the end of their dynasty.
In Beijing, the oft-cited theory goes, the whole world is intent on knocking China off its paddler pedestal, particularly the 'obviously biased' folks that run the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).
A flurry of rule changes introduced in recent years has fuelled the conspiracy theories. In Atlanta in 1996, and Sydney four years later, China took the four gold table tennis medals on offer - men's and women's singles and doubles. And back in the old glory days, just to get up the oppositions' noses even further, the doubles finals were often all-China events that looked more like national finals. But the red tide was slowed before Athens when it was ruled that doubles teams from the same country would be placed in the same half of the draw, ensuring they could no longer clean-sweep the finals. Clearly an initiative to shackle China's superiority, Beijing argued.
This followed two fundamental rule changes to the game that Chinese purists insist were designed to invite pretenders to sit on the throne. First of all the size of the ball was increased, and secondly, the scoring in the games was reduced from 21 points to 11 points - adjustments the Chinese say increase the chances of an inferior player scraping a lucky victory.
And for the 2008 Olympics, the doubles game has been dropped altogether. In its place is a team event where three players will represent a country, playing one doubles match and four singles in total. This will reduce China's representation as they will only be able to enter one team, unlike before where more than one pair could qualify for the doubles. But what really concerns Beijing was the news this week from the ITTF that substitutes would not be allowed.
In other international events a team of three can bring two subs, but this will not be permitted in the Olympics as the IOC has imposed a strict cap on the overall number of athletes permitted to participate in the games. If a player gets injured a team will have to pull out - a situation, China argues, that again increases the role of luck in the event and so weakens their dominant hand. In the Athens games, horror of horrors, China only managed to win three out of four golds, with Wang Hao losing in the final to South Korean Ryu Seung Min.
Since then, there have been other signs here and there that China's grip might be slipping. In the ITTF ProTour event in Fuzhou last month, for instance, China's Zhang Yining won the women's singles, but no other Chinese player made it to any of the other three finals - the first time in the event's ten-year history that had been seen.