I personally believe that in any sport, whether it's TT, Basketball, you name it, it's never good that there is one country that is dominating and everyone else is so far behind. It's very hard to promote the sport in other countries other than the dominant country when you don't have a type of "leader" or someone to be inspired by for the young players from these countries which means that they won't have the drive or that extra push to continue training hard to get better and better. So when you have someone like Harimoto for Japan, or Calderano for Brazil, whose results probably get widespread attention in their countries, it helps to promote the sport even further in there. I'm not anti any of the countries you mentioned. I simply think it would be better for everyone, including China, if the competition was more balanced in terms of the level of play. This is just my opinion. I respect your opinion as well.
That is true
but then the problems is not China, the problem is all your other countries.
Take Brazil for example, how much Calderano glory do you think actually helps Table Tennis in the greater picture in Brazil?
I don't think that much to be honest.
Japanese table tennis started with them making Ai Fukahara a celebrity status.
Asian TV has a lot of TV shows, and that helped promoted a 6 year old Ai to become a child celebrity.
Ai was more famous with her cuteness and being a big cry baby (again cute in the eyes of the audience)
Within no time, she had a huge fellowship, and that leads to marketing endorsements.
That also helped push the viewership to make TT the 3rd biggest in Japan (baseball, sumo I think is bigger) that stage.
There is a Calderano for Brazil
There is a Jha for America
Is Calderano or Jha the "leader" to make the changes required?
I think not.... I think you need a PR guru to spin it off.
The problem is that many countries investment (including fans investment to the sport) is below par.
Take your country for example, Romania.... if your citizens and government can give more into the sport, i'm sure Romania will be medalist in womens TT for sure.
You can't expect a close to 0 investment army to be able to win wars with the US army...
Same thing with your China in TT, USA in basketball, NZ in Rugby....
But you know what, I don't see these negative sentiments about NZ's dominance in Rugby, or USA in Basketball.
I think the world in general just has a more negative sentiment on Chinese domination in general (I see people complaining the Chinese are taking over the worlds etc). Maybe because the government itself isn't a good role model, but then, which government is.
Anyways, I am all in vote for other countries to wake up, step up, and compete.
Nothing wrong with having 10 Ma Longs from different countries.