All Four Chinese Men Fall in Montpellier as the Women Sweep the Semifinals
China's men's singles players all lost in the Montpellier quarterfinals — the third straight year they have missed the WTT Champions final weekend — while Chinese women took all four semifinal places.
The last of China's men in the Montpellier singles draw fell on Saturday night, and he fell the hard way. Zhou Qihao pushed Germany's Patrick Franziska to a seventh game and lost the decider by two points, after Liang Jingkun had been knocked out by South Korea's Jang Woojin and Lin Shidong by Sweden's Truls Moregard. For the third straight year, no Chinese man will play on the final weekend of the WTT Champions event in southern France.
The women's draw at the same tournament points the other way: Chinese players took all four semifinal places, at an event where Sun Yingsha had already outlasted Japan's Hayata Hina in seven games, stretching her win streak to 22. One national program, two trajectories, four days apart.
What stings is not one defeat but the pattern. "The layer of window paper between China's second-string men and the world's best has not been pierced — it is getting thicker," one widely shared analysis argued, noting that opponents now "see China's non-main players and their eyes turn green: they truly dare to win, and they can." In the 1,000-point WTT Champions circuit, the post noted, these are the matches that shape rankings and confidence alike.
Others looked past the players. One blunt post on the topic called the sweep "not a joke, but comeuppance," locating the failure in "the interest chain behind the results" rather than in anyone's forehand — and in how the system treats those who walk away from it. Harimoto Tomokazu, the Japanese star born to a Chinese family, is called a traitor whenever he beats China, the post noted; Fan Zhendong, the Olympic champion who chose to compete abroad, was mocked as unpatriotic when he left. "Individual resistance before the system is like an ant," it concluded. "Perhaps only leaving offers a way out."
The semifinal lineup was set without a single Chinese name: Brazil's Hugo Calderano, South Korea's Jang Woojin, Sweden's Truls Moregard and Germany's Patrick Franziska. The women will contest their last four among themselves. Which of the two is the anomaly is the question the Chinese program now carries toward the Los Angeles Olympics.