Some are calling it the new 'ping-pong diplomacy'. The mainland is building a table tennis institute to train potential competitors from other countries following mounting complaints that it is monopolising the sport's world champions.
The Chinese Academy of Table Tennis, co-founded by the General Administration of Sports of China and Shanghai municipal government, is planning to recruit 150 overseas athletes by 2020. They will be trained, alongside 150 Chinese athletes, by top-level coaches such as Liu Guoliang and Shi Zhihao .
The Shanghai government will fund the start-up cost of 130 million yuan (HK$151 million) and the institute will start recruiting students for its four-year 'undergraduate' programme in table tennis from September 2011.
Executive director Zhang Jiancheng said the school was being set up partly to train young mainland athletes as well as in response to complaints that China had been scooping too many medals in international competitions.
China's first sporting medal in an international competition came in table tennis. In the half-century since 1959, when Rong Guotuan won the gold at the 25th World Table Tennis Championships, China snapped up almost every world championship. Chinese people jokingly call table tennis 'the game with the most certain outcome'.
In order to contain China's dominance, the International Table Tennis Federation had changed the rules from time to time, such as modifying the scoring system and imposing a quota on the athletes each country could send to the Olympic Games, Zhang said.
