Spotting young talent: students at a school chess tournament in Liaocheng in the province of Shandong
Bild: Getty
Three men, one goal: make China the leading chess nation – of all places, the country where the brain teaser was once banned. It’s almost done. But dark clouds are gathering.
When Ding Liren wins the World Chess Championship in the Kazakh capital of Astana, a bold vision formulated almost fifty years ago would be fulfilled: Project Great Dragon. It was mainly developed by three men: the Filipino Florencio Campomanes, who later became President of the World Chess Federation, Lim Kok Ann from Singapore, who made a name for himself as a microbiologist and organizer, and Tan Chin Nam, who soon became one of the richest men in Malaysia.
When they met in Kuala Lumpur in 1974, the three hatched a plan to make China the leading chess nation. And step by step: first for women, then for men, first as a team, then individually. At first glance, it was a ludicrous project. The Soviet Union dominated the brainteaser. In China, on the other hand, chess was banned during the Cultural Revolution and had only just been allowed again. If Chinese played chess, then Xiangqi. Traditional Chinese chess is not played on the squares but, like Go, on the intersections of the lines, with inscribed rather than symbolic pieces.
