Why are the Chinese so dominant in world table tennis?
There are many reasons. The first one is the system. The children start at school when they are five to six years old. Each school has a school team. In each town and region, depending on size, there are two or three so called sports schools. I worked at ones of these. When they are seven years old the talented children are allowed to go to these schools. In the morning they go to lessons. In the afternoon and evening they practice under professional conditions. The children live there as well. In the whole of China there are 300 to 400 of such schools. Then you can easily work out the number of good players. The second reason is the competence of the coaches. All coaches are former professionals at a high level. The third reason is the selection. The highest sporting target of a table tennis player in China is to become world champion. They can only manage that if they get into the national squad and you need to be very good and must have extremely high stability and strength in compe