Perhaps to conclude this thread, I would say the biggest winner is surely CNT. More specifically, the women's team as the order in the men's team (ML/FZD/XX) is clearly still rather firm. If I understand it right, they had three main goals for Qatar Open and all were met.
1) To ascertain the effectiveness of the closed-door training. Without a doubt, the fact that the semi-finalists and finalists are all players who will be attending WTTC next month speaks well of their current forms (although DN's almost ZYL-like loss to WMY is still jarringly etched in my mind).
2) To cross swords with their major opponents, mainly the Japanese women. With some luck, Ishikawa, Ito and Hirano all encountered CNT players and fell pretty badly (but Hirano and Ito did put up decent fights against HZJ and DN respectively). Other notable names such as Feng Tianwei and Jeon Jihee were not spared either. A rather huge confidence boost I would imagine.
3) To squeeze out Ishikawa from the highest echelons of the World Ranking. With her straight games loss to SYS in the round of 32, it is confirmed that the team leader of Japan will bleed ranking points (the new system introduced in 2019 did not help her either) since her SF finish last year in Qatar is one of the major pillars of her current score. To make matters worse for her, Ishikawa's German Open (which she had won) will expire (or have expired at the point of typing this) as well by the end of March. If my calculations are right, the new order will be 1) Ding Ning, 2) Zhu Yuling, 3) Chen Meng, 4) Wang Manyu, 5) Liu Shiwen. This means that Ding, Chen, Wang and Liu will be the top 4 seeds for WTTC and thus will not meet each other until at least the SF if all goes according to plan. Unless they get Sun Yingsha in their respective quarters, it will be CNT women against the rest of the world.
Gotta give Liu Guoliang credit for his meticulous planning eh.
