China won the Silver at the 2006 World Team Championship. The Gold was within their grasp. China also captured the Silver at the 2006 Olympiad in Turin. They just defeated the world team at the Taiyuan Scheveningen event.
Their women players already captured a number of Olympiad Gold medals. China also produced 3 Women’s World Champions: Xie Jun, Zhu Chen and Xu Yuhua. Their newest star Yifan Hou is a Women’s World Champion in the making. Zhao Xue is also another potential Women’s World Champion.
I credit their successes to GM Xie Jun, the first true chess superstar in China. She is very actively involved with the chess development in China.
I expect Bu Xiangzhi (former world’s youngest GM) to be the first Chinese GM to cross the 2700 mark. The future of chess in China is very bright.
Do you agree with my assessment?
I agree with you about the boom in Chess in China (is it only women’s chess, or has men’s chess shown a similar rise), but I’d be shocked if it isn’t riding on extensive state support, as in the old Soviet Union. That means Chess there is at the service of a regime with an appalling record on human rights and political liberty. Is that something we should cheer?
Yes, Xie Jun is monumental in their chess boom.
sounds better than cheering for the USCF and the mess we have in this country.
I wish Susan would get the same support in this country.
I think the american school system would be better if they supported chess in the schools. chess is good for kids.
I am so sick of those who always want to point their fingers to China on human rights issues whenever they can, although they may never visited China for one single day in their life time. When innocent and armless people can be shot to death by police officer here, when hundreds of poor people die in New Orleans last year, do you care about their rights as a human being here? Mind your own business!
Stay in chess topic!
I think the american school system would be better if they supported chess in the schools. chess is good for kids.
I agree completely on this point.
“I am so sick of those who always want to point their fingers to China on human rights issues whenever they can, although they may never visited China for one single day in their life time. When innocent and armless people can be shot to death by police officer here, when hundreds of poor people die in New Orleans last year, do you care about their rights as a human being here? Mind your own business!
Stay in chess topic!”
Then why didn’t *you* “stay in chess topic”? Why should *you* get the last word?
Now if only our Women’s team could win a silver we’d see a similar boom.
It’s wrong to make a close
comparison between the status
of chess in China today and
its status in the former USSR.
China has comparatively few
players with FIDE ratings.
GM Bu Xiangzhi recently stated
that chess remains much less
popular than xiangqi (Chinese
chess) and weiqi (go) in China.
Contrary to what some people
might assume, China’s government
has not been compelling young
players of xianqi and weiqi
to play chess instead.
In her book _Chess Bitch_,
Jennifer Shahade denounced some
common negative stereotypes
of Chinese players (e.g. the
Chinese players are incapable
of creativity) for being based
on little, if anything, more
than sheer prejudice.
I expect that the Chinese
teams will continue to do
at least as well as they
have done at the Olympiads.
I also expect that some
people will continue to
be unhappy about that.
I think two things Chinese do help their chess development a lot:
(1) China has a system of training the talented. They select and gather them to National Youth Team for training with state support.
(2) For Chinese professionals, chess is their paid job. Do our GMs get a salary to play chess? No.
I don’t see that we can do similar things here. But if USCF is rich enough or if USCF can find sponsors, maybe we can give our age top 10s annual GM chess camps. I heard that GM Polgar is planning something, like training sessions, to the top girls.
I am in regular contact with a Chinese girl chess player. She is rated over 2300 FIDE and plays in the national league there for the sports technical college where she lives.
She has lived there for over 10 years and is now in her early 20’s. In that time, she has been allowed to visit her family for a few days once a year.
This is not a comment on the rights or wrongs of such a system, there are many people in China who believe she is one of a lucky pampered few.
My main issue with this idea, is what happens to the players who after a decade of studying chess almost to the exclusion of anything else, don’t make it?
For every star this system produces, there have to be those who almost made it. My hope is that they are not abandoned, and are given help to find a worthwhile place in or out of the chess world.