Game, Set, Match to China

Go to a table tennis match between, say, Poland and Finland, and you’ll see something confusing. “It’s just Chinese playing against each other,” says America’s national team coach. China is so mind-bogglingly dominant at table tennis that it exports players throughout the world and still wins nearly every major competition. The Wall Street Journal checks it out.

“A Chinese player will beat an American player 11-0,” said Gao Jun, a Chinese member of the US women's team. “Or the US can use a Chinese player and maybe have a close match—which way do you want it?” The migration has so frustrated homegrown players that the International Table Tennis Federation instated immigration-curbing rules in February. (More Ping Pong diplomacy stories.)