Shanghai Daily news

China stuck to its familiar established lineup when it announced its squad yesterday to bid for the world titles at the 48th World Table Tennis Championship in Shanghai later this month.
Wang Liqin will lead the men's hopefuls - Ma Lin, Wang Hao, Kong Linghui, Liu Guozheng, Hao Shuai, Chen Qi, Yan Sen and Qiu Yike - when the championship kicks off on April 30 at the Shanghai Grand Stage.
Wang Liqin, Wang Hao and Chen will compete in three events - singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
Wang Liqin, a Shanghai native, won the doubles gold at the last worlds in Paris in 2003. He is also a past singles and doubles winner at the world championship in 2001 in Osaka.
Another all-rounder Ma Lin, the defending mixed doubles champion along with Wang Nan, will not defend his crown but instead will battle for singles and doubles titles.
"We asked Ma to drop the mixed doubles in order to focus on the other two events," Liu Guoliang, the men's team general coach, said in Beijing yesterday.
China sweeped all the medals on offer - except for the prized men's singles crown - at the last world championship. It missed out on the singles again at last year's Athens Olympics.
As per ITTF rules, seven out of the nine on roster will compete for the singles title. Wang Liqin, Ma and Wang Hao - the top three in the world - are favorites to reclaim the title but will feel the pressure playing in front of home fans.
Wang Hao lost to South Korean Rye Seung-min in the Athens final and will be looking to make amends.
China will have three pairs vying for the men's doubles title with Wang Liqin teaming up with Yan; Kong with Wang Hao and Ma with Chen.
There were no surprises as well in the eight-member women's roster with all too familiar faces of Wang Nan and Zhang Yining again leading the Chinese charge along with Niu Jianfeng, Guo Yue, Guo Yan, Cao Zhen, Fan Ying and Bai Yang.
The women have been more dominant than their male counterparts in the sport, with Wang Nan herself picking up 11 gold medals in the last four world championship.
Zhang Yining notched the Olympic singles title in Athens in August and later paired with Wang for the doubles crown.
Except for Bai, all the others will contest for the singles.
Wang/Zhang, Niu/Guo Yue and Bai/Guo Yan will also compete in the doubles.
China will have seven pairs battling it out in the mixed doubles contest.
After training in Zhengding, Hebei Province, the national team will leave Beijing tomorrow for Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, for warmup matches. It will arrive in the city on Sunday.