Massive Chinese withdrawal forces Japan Open re-draw

As foretold by Wang Lin and other players yesterday, the Chinese National Badminton Team has effected a wholesale withdrawal from next week’s Yonex Japan Open Superseries.

The removal of all ten of China’s singles players and three men’s doubles pairs necessitated a re-draw for those three disciplines.   The updated draws, which were published yesterday, still show China’s two women’s doubles pairs, one men’s doubles pair  and three mixed pairs (only one of which is seeded); however, Bao Yixin, whose name still appears twice in the new draws, told Badzine today that neither she nor any Chinese players would be playing in Japan.

Sources in the Badminton World Federation (BWF) say that  these will be recorded as walkovers next week.  Mixed and women’s doubles did not involve qualifying draws and the competitions could proceed with no re-draw and simply two withdrawn Chinese seeds.  At the time of writing, China’s Hong Wei / Shen Ye still appear as 4th seeds in the men’s doubles draw, but that oversight is expected to be corrected soon.

While Wang Lin’s microblog discussion yesterday included mention of a political reason for the Chinese withdrawal, this has since been removed and Chinese players at the China Masters in Changzhou yesterday cited other reasons for their team forgoing the trip to Japan.

Click here to download the Japan Open re-draws (Note: The draws have now been amended to remove Hong/Shen from the men’s doubles and the second MD re-draw is now included)