since we are on the topic of win rates and what makes someone a true threat to chinese dominance I figured I would compile a (nonexhaustive) list of the wins of women who have been labelled 'threats' against the chinese.
Some of my choices were questionable, especially after calculations had been made (*AHEM* Yu Mengyu, Dang Ye Seo, Shen Yanfei) but it really goes to show how dominant the Chinese have been when even a single victory against their main players is enough for you to be considered a threat.
Considering the fact that defeating second string chinese players doesn't do anything to nullify their dominance, I've only calculated matchups against CNT women who have at least done one of:
1. Represented China in the Olympics since 2004
2. Appeared in more than one WTTC singles event
(i.e. no Mu Zi, Cao Zhen or Hu Limei - again, I might have missed out some people)
Some findings:
a) Zhang Yining, Ding Ning and Li Xiaoxia are major confounders to the data,
scoring 10 or more wins over multiple opponents (no coincidence then that they are all Olympic champions), Liu Shiwen is up there in this list as well, and the cells have been
highlighted in red.
b) Beating a Chinese player more than once is an accomplishment. Cells
highlighted in yellow show match-ups where a non-chinese player has
beaten a CNT player 3 or more times. Only Jiang Huajun and Li Jiawei have this ascendency over more than 1 player.
c) Building on the previous point, many players have beaten individual players of CNT's core team once, but never again once they've been 'figured out' as we like to say here. Notably, Mima Ito has only beaten Liu Shiwen and Ding Ning more than once. That says something about her long-term threat to the Chinese. It remains to be seen whether the younger generation are as susceptible to her play style.
d) Mima Ito leads the rest of the pack by far with a
25.71% rate over main CNT players. Surprisingly, Tamara Boros comes in second at
22.86%, though my data could have been confounded for not including players before the 2004 era, in which Boros was more active. Other notable players with a win rate of
>15% are:
FENG Tianwei,
JIANG Huajun and
GAO Jun
e) Average win rate for someone who is considered a 'threat to CNT' is
12.87%. Players who have
less than 10% win rate against CNT are:
MIU Hirano,
ISHIKAWA Kasumi,
Lin Ling,
SHEN Yanfei and
YU Mengyu
I think the saddest part of this all is that the biggest threat to CNT only has a 1/4 chance of beating the main team. I'm sure her stats are higher if second-string players are included, but I doubt the percentage will go beyond 30%. That's Japan's chances of winning gold in Tokyo 2020, folks.
*information is based on ITTF's head-to-head data base, which to my knowledge is not 100% accurate. There are several instances where they have missed out matches that I recall very specifically
*results are definitely biased as I have included Chinese Super League results to slightly bolster the wins of non-CNT players. So the actual numbers are actually slightly more dismal