Chess in China

China is now a major chess power and proved so graphically at the 2006 37th Chess Olympiad in Turin when the men's team came second and the women's team third for easily the best result overall. The Chinese progress has been underpinned by large government support and testing competition in numerous tough events. Commensurate with its status, China currently has five top hundred players. However, even today countries like Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Israel still have an edge in experience over their Chinese counterparts. It is only the last few decades that chess has gained popularity in China where it still trails xiangqi or Chinese Chess by a considerable margin. Today, there are about three million people in China who play chess, with 300,000 federation players, compared with an estimated 300 million Go players in China.