One of China’s soft power success stories of the past decade has taken a hit in recent days, with seven Chinese snooker players being suspended by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WBPSA) on suspicion of match-fixing.
The spectacle reached its nadir on Monday as 22-year-old former Masters champion Yan Bingtao (顏丙濤) was forced to withdraw from the English Open on the morning of his first match over allegations of manipulating the outcome of matches for betting purposes. Yan’s suspension followed those of Lu Ning (魯寧), Li Hang (李行), Chang Bingyu (常冰玉), Bai Langning (白朗寧), and Zhao Jianbo (趙劍波) last week, which in turn followed the suspension of Liang Wenbo (梁文博) on October 27. Jason Ferguson, chairman of snooker’s governing body the WPBSA, indicated to BBC Essex that the suspensions were all linked and, barring appeals, they will remain in place until investigations are completed.
The story is inevitably a blow to the reputations of those involved, even before any final judgment is passed down from the sport’s governing body, placing a shadow over a number of promising young players’ careers. Yan in particular is considered one of snooker’s major stars after becoming in 2021 the youngest player to win the Masters (one of three “major” events) in 26 years.
Rightly or wrongly, what is at stake here is more than the reputations of individuals. In an atmosphere of mostly negative coverage about China, snooker has been an entirely different story in which, in the U.K. at least, the country’s reputation has blossomed. Ask a random person in the U.K. to name a Chinese sportsperson and there is a good chance that they will name a snooker player, because at least three times a year — during the Masters, U.K. Championship and World Championship — the BBC hosts hours of coverage of snooker matches in which top Chinese players have become high-profile contenders. Their efforts — backed by massive support back in China, and huge investment — have seen the sport transformed from one dominated by players from the U.K. (with notable exceptions) to one in which around 20 of the world’s current top 100 players are from China, plus several from Hong Kong.
At risk now, then, is some of the respect that has grown around that success. A decade ago Chinese players were patronized as curiosities or even subjected to outright racism. While those issues still exist, the idea that a Chinese player could soon become World Champion is now widely held among top professionals, and coverage has been increasingly enthusiastic. Granted, some of that respect may have been generated by financial reality — until the COVID pandemic, four tour events were being held regularly in China, and despite COVID, last year WPBSA chairman Ferguson revealed that “The Chinese market is around 30% of the whole world snooker tour these days.” But there also seems to be genuine cross-cultural warmth between some top players from the U.K. and those from China, and that also appears to have been matched by improving fan reactions at top events in the U.K. One could compare, for instance, Ding Jinhui being (horrifically) booed and insulted in his Masters final defeat to Ronnie O’Sulivan in 2007, to the reception Yan Bingtao received during his winning final in 2021.
Should any of that progress be affected by what is right now the potential actions of seven players? No. The sport itself has had brushes with match-fixing before — former world number one John Higgins was found guilty of “giving the impression he was prepared to act in breach of betting rules,” for instance — and it has not always destroyed those players’ careers, nevermind those of the same nationality. Furthermore, for its part, the Chinese Billiards & Snooker Association (CBSA) has also suspended the first six players at the time of writing, cutting off one obvious claim of structural issues. This is before mentioning that one of the younger players has publicly alleged one of the older players pressured him into wrongdoing, alluding to the complexities that will have to be unraveled by any investigation.
But reputations don’t operate as mathematical calculations for what is fair and what isn’t, and on that level there is obviously a cloud over top-level Chinese snooker at this moment. On Chinese social media site Weibo, one user from China wrote: “Snooker is faker than Chinese football as a sport” (比中國足球還假的運動，就是斯諾克). Another wrote that “For match-fixing, you have to be banned for life!” (打假球就得終身禁賽！) Meanwhile, on Twitter, fans speculated about the involvement of organized crime. For anyone who thinks soft power matters, these feelings are as valuable as the facts yet to be uncovered.
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