Five-time US champion Hikaru Nakamura suggested in a recent live broadcast that it didn’t matter who won against Ding Nepomoniachichi. “A world champion will not be treated as a world champion,” he said. “I don’t care if Nepomniachtchi wins. I don’t care if Ding wins. They both deserve to win the match. But that wouldn’t make them world champions in anyone’s book.”
Deng’s victory was significant for both China and Russia. Chess has been dominated by the Russians for most of the last century, in part because of the legacy of the Soviet Union, which encouraged supremacy in the game as proof of its superiority over the West.
Instead of China adopting the game for similar reasons, it rejected it because it was popular in what it considered a “degenerate” West. For eight years during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the game was banned from being played.
The perception of chess in China began to change after Xie Jun won the Women’s World Championship in 1991, becoming the first non-Russian, non-Georgian woman to hold the title. This sparked a flurry of state-sponsored activities designed to develop elite players, a project known collectively as the grandiose, “Dragon’s Big Plan”. Chinese schools established chess clubs, and training and tournament institutions spread. Last year, the Chinese government unveiled a new 10-year plan to develop the country’s next generation of Miracles.
China’s commitment has already yielded results. Women’s series after Xie won the Women’s World Championship, allowing China to claim the title for the most of the past 32 years. The current defending champion is Guo Wenjun, who became champion in 2018. She will face compatriot Li Tingjie, in a match in July, to ensure the women’s title remains in Chinese hands.
China has also produced some very good men’s players in recent years, with half a dozen top 20 players ascending the world rankings at one point or another. But Ding was the best of it all.
Born in Wenzhou a year after Xie’s victory, he was taught to play chess by his father, a chess enthusiast, when he was four years old. He began competing in tournaments soon after and won his first national title when he was five years old. He rose to international fame in 2009, at the age of 16, when he became the Chinese domestic champion. He won the title again in 2011 and 2012.