China celebrates its first world chess champion. After Ding Liren’s victory against the Russian Jan Nepomnyashchi in Astana the day before, Chinese state media spoke of a “historic victory”.
The communist party organ “People’s Daily” wrote that the four-stage Chinese chess strategy had “finally worked out”. The paper recalled the previous first world title for a Chinese female chess player in 1991, the first gold for the women’s team in 1998 at the Chess Olympiad and gold for the men in 2014.
The success made waves on the Chinese short message service Weibo. Millions of Chinese followed the news from Kazakhstan’s capital during the night Chinese local time and cheered the success. “We Chinese have risen to the highest chess stage,” commented. Ding Liren has been described as “the pride of China”.
Media exuberant
With the world championship title for Ding Liren, “the long-cherished wish of several generations of Chinese chess players has been fulfilled”, the “Hangzhou Ribao” stated. The 30-year-old is “finally at the top of the world and making history for China’s national reputation,” the newspaper said. “It’s a memorable moment.”
State television saw “another milestone for Chinese chess players”. After chess was once frowned upon as “decadent” in communist China and even banned for eight years during the “Cultural Revolution” (1966-76), China has steadily risen to become a chess nation since the 1990s at the latest.
Above all, the world championship title in 1991 for the player Xie Jun triggered a boom. Chess was funded by the state – chess clubs sprang up everywhere. Originally from Wenzhou in east China’s Zejiang province, Ding Liren started playing at the age of four himself, encouraged by his father, who was a keen chess player. Ding Liren won a national tournament for the first time at the age of five – his first title as Chinese chess champion at the age of 16.
“European players may be a bit more adventurous compared to us,” Ding Liren said on state television a year ago. Like him, they usually opened a game very cautiously and played prepared moves. “We’re not going into uncharted territory that neither side is familiar with,” said Ding Liren. “But European players are somehow creative or adventurous and sometimes play unconventionally with new ideas.” Magnus Carlsen was world champion so far, the Norwegian had decided not to defend his title.
