Dr. Zhang Xiaopeng, a leading researcher in the world of table tennis, has listed technical innovations in Chinese table tennis:

From one side to two sides

The year of 1995 was a watershed in the technical development of Chinese table tennis. Since the 40th world championships in 1989 in which Swede Jan-Ove Waldner won the men's singles crown, Europeans started to accept the Chinese concept of "using forehand attacks as a major weapon, hitting the ball early and taking the initiative in offense", and witnessed the maturing of an extremely aggressive style represented by Frenchman Jean-Philippe Gatien, Belgian Jean-Michael Saive and German Jorg Rosskopf.

Around 1995, Chinese learned from the successes and defeats of penhold attackers Jiang Jialiang and Chen Longcan and handshake attacker Teng Yi, producing a secret weapon, represented by Kong Linghui, to deal with Europeans.

While making full use of their forehand power, European players failed to mend their weaknesses, especially in backhand. That made them technically unbalanced and gave Chinese opportunities to catch up.

Since Jiang, Chen and Teng called it quits, Chinese had fear for heavy loops and long rallies by Europeans. They knew Gatien and his likes had weaknesses but they didn't have the ability to turn the tables.

In the early 1990s, the Chinese were jolted awake by a fact that they were disadvantageous in long rallies against South Koreans and Swedes. After realizing the problem, Chinese coaches stressed the importance of forehand attacks and taking the initiative. They urged players to expose backhand loopholes of then top players like Saive and Gatien by attacking their forehands and pressuring backhands. Chinese regained the dominance in 1995 by clean-sweeping all the seven world titles.

In terms of third-ball attacks and attacks on serves, Chinese had gradually switched from the use of one side to two sides. From the 36th to 39th world championships, while most Europeans were struggling in dealing with Chinese serves and receives, Waldner, his teammate Jorgen Persson and Gatien had found effective ways to deal with deep returns by Chinese. At that time, Chinese top players Jiang, Chen and Teng could hardly control the table once they lost the initiative in attacking. Defeats were inevitable in the 1991 and 1993 world championships. In the 1995 championships, a new generation of Chinese players - Kong Linghui, Liu Guoliang, Ma Wenge and Wang Tao - appeared and they all could attack with two sides of the racket. Then started an ensuing decade of China vs. World.

1

2