Xiao Guodong became the first player from China to reach a Champion of Champions final with his 6-3 defeat of Mark Allen on Friday in Bolton.
The 35 year-old followed up his superb triumphs over Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby a day earlier with another fine display against the reigning champion.
It prolongs a very strong period for Chinese snooker players, the large contingent on the main tour combining to regularly break new ground of late.
This has been underlined by the fact there are now four Chinese snooker players ranked inside the top 16 of the world rankings list for the first time in the sport’s history.
Xiao joined the elite bracket of the official two-year list following his run to the semi-finals of last week’s International Championship.
That effort quickly followed his career breakthrough at the Wuhan Open where he landed a maiden ranking crown and secured an invitation to this week’s prestigious event.
But Xiao certainly hasn’t been alone in terms of Chinese snooker players enjoying success within the game over the last 18-month spell.
Si Jiahui, the player Xiao beat to capture glory in Wuhan, also broke into the world’s top 16 for the first time earlier this year.
Xiao and Si join Ding Junhui and Zhang Anda in the elite bracket of the standings, meaning a quarter of the top 16 now comprises Chinese snooker players for the first time ever.
Ding, who returned to winning ways in Nanjing last weekend, became the first player from mainland China to earn the coveted status way back in 2007.
By then, he had already made a name for himself by triumphing as a teenager at the 2005 China Open in Beijing – igniting an explosion of popularity for the game in the country.
Several months later, Ding beat all-time great Steve Davis to lift the UK Championship trophy and duly looked set to become the sport’s dominant force.
It didn’t quite work out that way, but the 37 year-old has still carved out a successful career for himself and remains an inspiration to many up-and-coming talents in his homeland.
Towards the end of the decade, there was a huge influx of players from China graduating to compete on the main tour – each hoping to emulate Ding’s immediate success.
Among them were Liang Wenbo and Li Hang, whose names were tarnished last year amid the match-fixing scandal involving ten Chinese snooker players that rocked the sport.
Li and Former English Open champion Liang were handed lifetime bans for their roles in the betting ring, and it led many to wonder if the popularity of snooker in China would suffer as a result.
The outcome of the investigation, which also saw former Masters champion Yan Bingtao and former UK champion Zhao Xintong handed bans, came just as Chinese snooker was reopening following years of inactivity as a result of the global pandemic.
Yet as it has turned out, the last year and a half have proven to be fruitful for both the tournaments staged in China and the players from the cue-sports-loving country who are still competing on the professional circuit.
While it was commonplace to see empty arenas at a lot of the Chinese ranking events before 2020, since doors have reopened the public has flocked back to watch their favourite stars.
Play for Ronnie O’Sullivan’s encounter with Mink Nutcharut at last week’s International Championship had to be delayed due to crowd control.
The increased attendances have occurred against a backdrop of Chinese snooker players becoming more frequent presences at the business of ranking events.
Zhang, who despite being a pro for more than a decade, had never been ranked inside the world’s top 64 until 2023 but ended last season as a three-time ranking event finalist and an International Championship winner.
Si embarked on a memorable run to the semi-finals of the 2023 World Championship before reaching his maiden ranking final at the turn of this year.
He narrowly missed out on his first piece of silverware after being defeated by Judd Trump in the title-deciding contest of the German Masters, but Si is widely regarded as the most exciting young player in the game at the moment.
The 22 year-old’s recent Wuhan Open showdown with Xiao represented only the third time that a ranking event concluded with an all-Chinese final.
Indeed, three of the four semi-finalists in Wuhan were Chinese, something that was immediately repeated at the 2024 International Championship earlier this month.
In addition to Ding, Zhang, Si, and Xiao, there are another eight Chinese snooker players ranked inside the world’s top 50 at present.
That includes Wu Yize, who has risen to a career-high of number 29 in the world on the back of reaching the English Open final in September.
Zhao Xintong, meanwhile, who had been ranked as high as number six prior to his ban, has already begun his journey back to the main tour and has been tearing it up on the feeder Q Tour in the last couple of months.
Years ago, when Ding led the initial incursion of Chinese players, there was a sense that snooker could be taken over there and the traditional hub of the UK left behind.
That didn’t materialise, not as quickly as expected anyway, with players from the UK continuing to make up the majority of the world’s top 16 and China still waiting for its first world champion.
But despite the setbacks and controversies, wave upon wave of talent from China continues to emerge onto the professional scene.
That has been highlighted in recent times by strong performances from the likes of Pang Junxu, Xu Si, He Guoqiang, and Long Zehuang – to name just a few of the younger crop who are getting positive results.
As Shaun Murphy pointed out in the latest episode of his podcast, threats to snooker’s long-term popularity from other developing cue sports in China exist.
However, right now Chinese snooker is arguably enjoying its greatest sustained period of success – both in terms of triumphs on the table and the extra interest that will consequently inspire off of it.
“In five years time, half of the top 16 will be Chinese,” was uttered so often by pundits in the past that it became a prediction of ridicule, a cliché.
With Chinese snooker players featuring more prominently at the business end of events than ever before, though, that statement might actually now be true.
Featured photo credit: WST
Xiao is the only second player after Neil Robertson to reach the Champions of Champions final from outside the UK.
You can’t see enough competition from other areas of the globe to prevent Chinese supremacy as talent from elsewhere is occasional rather than in the greater numbers we see being produced from China.
A timely article, which seems to capture a genuine process at play: the fulfillment of Chinese and wider east Asian snooker, and cue sports, and the gradual decline of British and “commonwealth” snooker at the same time. It really looks to me like a two fold dynamic. One waxes as the other wanes. The top two British players right now are Trump and Wilson, and they are aged in their mid and early thirties, and genuinely seem to have arrived at their competitive peak. I’m unsure who fills that gap between ages 32 and 21 from Britain or Ireland. I still think it’s possible that the wealth of British and Irish snooker talents of the last thirty years have been directly built on the explosive 80’s heyday and that there has been nothing significant following on, in terms of demographic mass; it wasn’t a tidal wave, it was more of a one off “tsunami” of talent. If so, then the demographic weight of China can, at last, fully tell upon the equation of professional snookers playing talent and financials.