Table Tennis in Brussels: 24 Players, 6 Mixed Teams and a Story Without a Score

On an afternoon in Brussels, I witnessed something that nearly four decades of following table tennis has rarely shown me: Chinese and European players standing on the same side of the table, sharing positions, cooperating instead of competing. No score, no sidelines, no referees. Just 24 people and a white plastic ball weighing less than three grams bouncing back and forth between two continents. That was the China-EU Table Tennis Friendship Event, held at the Royal Alpa Table Tennis Club, hosted by the Mission of China to the European Union. What caught my attention was not what happened on the table, but what lay behind it. According to the organisers, the event brought together 24 players, split evenly in half: 12 from the Mission of China to the EU, the Chinese Embassy in Belgium and other Chinese institutions based in Brussels; the other 12 were table tennis enthusiasts from Euroclub, representing EU institutions. They were arranged into six mixed teams of four, in which Chinese and European players were required to stand side by side. This is the most notable detail. In table tennis - a sport where every point must be decided with absolute clarity by a serve, a counter-loop, a referee's call - organising an event without a score is a deliberate choice. People do not organise friendlies to prove who is stronger. They organise friendlies to do something else. The European Table Tennis Union (ETTU) was represented at the event by Vice President Didier Leroy and Secretary General Pierre Kass. Chinese Ambassador to the European Union Cai Run also attended and addressed the players. Two honorary guests made me pause longer: former Olympic and World Champions Yan Sen and Zhang Yining. Both are now involved with the China Table Tennis College and CTTC Europe. For those in the profession, the appearance of these two names is no small matter. Zhang Yining held the women's world No. 1 ranking for years, won four Olympic gold medals, and is known in table tennis circles by the nickname "Golden Hands". Yan Sen was an Olympic and World Champion in men's doubles. Bringing these two legends to Brussels was not for competition - they retired long ago - but to represent something larger than the sport itself. True champions are not measured by medals, but by what they leave behind after leaving the court. I recalled history. In 2026, an American table tennis team in Japan was unexpectedly invited to play in China. That trip paved the way for the normalisation of relations between the two countries. "Ping-pong diplomacy" became an official term in the dictionary of international relations. More than half a century later, the Chinese still use that tiny plastic ball as a diplomatic tool - only this time the partner is Europe, and the context is a world divided on many fronts. Looking more closely at CTTC Europe - the China Table Tennis College in Europe - I see an interesting story. This is not the first time Chinese table tennis has crossed borders. Since the 1990s, China has implemented a policy known in professional circles as "raising wolves" - sending coaches abroad, transferring training methods, even allowing young players to compete overseas. The dual goal: raise the overall standard of the sport while maintaining a leading position by creating worthy rivals that force it to improve. CTTC Europe is a step further. If China previously exported coaches, it now exports an entire institution. The participation of two former Olympic champions on CTTC Europe's board is not merely promotional. It signals a long-term, organised, strategic presence. A table tennis ball weighs less than three grams, yet it can carry an entire relationship between two continents. There is a small but thought-provoking detail. There is no score, yet there is drama. When Chinese and European players are forced to cooperate on every rally, they must understand each other at a level that diplomatic negotiations rarely reach. A European player understands how his Chinese teammate moves; a Chinese player understands the serving rhythm of his European teammate. Such understanding does not come from documents, but from a small ball bouncing between two halves of a table. But this is where I want to push back against the simplistic view. Many will hastily call this "a soft power move" or "China's influence strategy". That view is not wrong, but it is insufficient. The fact that the European Table Tennis Union sent its Vice President and Secretary General to attend shows that Europe also has its own interests. European table tennis needs the Chinese market, needs Chinese experts, and needs tournaments featuring Chinese players to maintain its appeal. That is the nature of elite sport: it is never a one-way game. Every time someone gives, they calculate what they will receive. The difference is that in table tennis, both sides need each other more than they want to admit. There is another dimension to this story that I - as a reporter from Southeast Asia - cannot help but consider. Vietnam lies in a region strongly influenced by Chinese table tennis. Many Vietnamese players have trained in China, many Vietnamese coaches have studied Chinese methods. Watching the Brussels event, I wondered: will the CTTC Europe model ever extend to Southeast Asia? And if so, how would we respond? In more than thirty years of writing, I have witnessed table tennis used as a diplomatic tool many times. But never have I seen it deployed with such organisation and method as this time. More than half a century after the 2026 "ping-pong diplomacy", the tiny plastic ball is still doing its job. Except now, there are more players, a bigger stage, and behind the smiles of the players lie longer-term calculations. At the end of the exchange, the players shook hands. The mixed teams - something that could not exist in any official tournament - dispersed amid laughter and group photos. No one remembered who won. Perhaps because no one had won at all. And perhaps that is the most important thing. In a world building ever more walls, two continents meeting over a ball weighing less than three grams remains one of the most beautiful stories sport can tell.