New Asia chief works to end China's dominance

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China's Cai Zhenhua was elected president of the Asian Table Tennis Union last week and admits his main priority is to make his own country less dominant.

China won all four golds at last year's Beijing Olympics and won 18 of 20 medals, including a sweep of all five titles, at the world championships in Japan earlier this year. Cai drew some flak from the Chinese media when, as top Chinese table tennis official and deputy sports minister, he said in May that China should help develop foreign talent.

That clearly has not put him off, however, and he is still keen to introduce ways to make other countries more competitive with China's medal-winning machine.

"Many countries need to work hard if they want to reach the same standard as China," Cai told the South China Morning Post newspaper at the Asian Championships in Lucknow, India.

"One of my major working areas as the new (president) is to develop table tennis at all levels in order to close the gap between China and the rest."

Some Chinese media have suggested that table tennis's position at the Olympics may not be safe if China continues to dominate as it has in recent years.

"This is only irresponsible speculation," Cai said. "I have never heard anything on this from the International Olympic Committee or the International Table Tennis Federation."