@ Bollforte, I am not saying he should change his game, but I am saying he should work on a particular aspect of the game that is lacking. Ideally you want to reach a level that your game really has no weaknesses. Look at Boll, he is really good at playing most styles, but for most of his career, despite him wooping most non Chinese players, he has always done bad against Oh Seung Unh, and the reason is because his playstyle with a ton of top spin fits perfectly against Oh's playstyle. Ma Long's style atm beats 95 percent of the people out there, for those 95%, by all means he should continue to play like he does, but for those 5 percent whose playstyle is comfortable with the all out super fast looping, he needs to develop an aspect of his game to beat those people as easily as he beats everyone else, and atm that aspect is lacking in my opinion.
As for Zhang Jike beating Ma Long, I actually think thats a very good possibility, a lot of Chinese coaches actually see more potential in Zhang's game than Ma Long, it has more variety, he gets more spin in his short game shots that he uses to transition the point from backspin to topspin, and I think generally he has a little better short game than Ma Long, with a 2 years of development he could very well be better than Ma Long.
@Dan, yeah but the problem is Kenta and Mizutani probably represent the biggest threat to Chinese dominance. The Chinese team doesn't care which Chinese player wins, as long as he is Chinese. Therefore it doesn't mean anything if Ma Long can beat most players, and all his fellow Chinese players, if he matches badly to the two biggest threats to the Chinese team.... Its the same reason why Hao Shua is forever a class B player in the Chinese national team's view. He does insanely well in the Chinese Superleague, better even than Ma Lin and others, but where as Ma Lin beats just about all non-Chinese players, Hao Shua loses to several of them.