Most know some English since it's usually taught since elementary school, and it's a good place to live. Men's TT is more competitive, so those factors would take precedence.
I mean, if they live in China they can just speak Chinese right?
The vast, vast majority do stay in China. You just don't see them competing internationally for obvious reasons.
Also for coaching, wouldn't there be a lot more students in Korea or Japan or Taiwan or something? Singapore? Even Germany or something.
Sure, there are a lot who go there. See Dang Qiu and Harimoto's parents, for example. Again, you don't hear about them because it's more competitive and they can only coach, and not play on say the German or Japanese national teams.
I don't know whether that is balance so much as the usual result vs Wang Chuqin.
Again, not exactly taking it easy, as Gaston Alto's superpower is service and blocking. But of course, the difference in level means the game is so slow for him he doesn't really need to try. But he is another guy who can make you look bad without seriously spinning any balls.
The highest level part of Gaston's game is his service and his blocking - that is what I see him doing well when he beats strong players (of course serving is really serve and attack). He isn't a counterlooper per se. Using ITTF ranking today to evaluate a player is misleading - Gaston was top 100 in the world at peak and easily one of the best South American players for a while. Watching someone play top 10 Chinese players is largely a waste of time unless something about their game is strong enough to cause the player significant problems. But when someone's service game is as strong as Gaston, he doesn't have to try hard to cause problems most of the problems will just be missed easy balls. But Kai likes to attack pushes so I am sure the scouting report told Gaston to flip almost all the service.
Sample sizes of one with all the caveats there in. Mishel is a lefty with really great serves. Sarah just took some miracle potion, such things should not be happening - but more seriously, I have always felt that the CNT players sometimes play matches with deliberate instructions to handicap them sometimes for training against weaker players. It is probably my own fairy tale, but things like CXT losing a game to Sarah make me think something like that is true.
I think the key is really service and receive. Obviously those lower rated players are not as good in rallies either, but whenever I see 2400+ players getting destroyed by pros it's in the service/receive game. If for whatever reason they can handle the service/receive game then they can win a set here and there or at least keep the score somewhat respectable most of the time.
That's inevitable but part of it is also that the lower rated players are generally expected to be handled by overall playing level and usually don't get specialized prep or coaching tactics used on them until after the first game. This is very different from the enemies of China who get dissected by the analytics and coaching teams and who every coach in the Chinese system knows their strengths and weaknesses and can tell you how to play them with eyes closed and who probably have a clone in practice for extra preparation.
World level is world level, there are no average players at the world level. Eugene has beaten a lot of players in the top 100, you can decide whether you want to use the word "average" for that or something else, there are no average 2800 players IMHO.
