This theory is based on 1) The Chinese players only lose when they want to. 2) No-one will ever develop tactics to consistently beat Chinese players. 3) Game-fixing is common in Chinese table tennis. 4) Chinese coaches have to maintain medal counts as their players and their whole system of recruiting and training is slipping, both for national prestige and for personal income. 5) Table Tennis has gone the way of professional sports, sinking into that pit of lies like Chinese pro soccer and US college basketball. 6) Table tennis sites will start to be covered with betting sites. 7)ITTF will change the clothing rules for women to make them wear underwear with centimeter minimums for cleavage and camel toe.
Very good post. A couple of comments on what WB just wrote.
Clearly Chinese players do occasionally lose to non-Chinese players. Not all that often it should be said. But they are not entirely invincible.
US college basketball is a cesspool, now being investigated by the FBI. But not for throwing matches! It is a bunch of other horrific stuff. The best thing the NBA can do is to enhance their G and D leagues to create a minor league system so that kids who have no reason to be in college (often for a single year for the best players) can forego the charade and just turn pro with a chance to make the NBA.
People assume that Chinese players fix matches but that seems to me to be based on practices from years ago. People always jump to that conclusion it is still going on but there is no good evidence for it (and no reason to think that chatter on Chinese websites is any more valid than chatter on any other internet forum). Something I have reason to think was going on very recently was listing players as younger than their actual age.
Table tennis in China
is a professional sport. Players are more or less professional by their early teens. No reason to think they are immune to any of the things that other sports are subject to. There is a lot at stake. China produces about ten fold as many good players as will ever make a decent living at the sport.
Medal counts are one thing but there are also aspects of national histories. I repeat again that Chinese athletes will never willingly lose to a Japanese athlete in any sport. I could almost imagine it happening with a player from some other country. But Japan? And this particular player? No way I will ever believe it. (I spend a lot of time in China).
