China's men's doubles team secured a spot in the round of 16 at the India tournament, with only the He-Zhou pair falling short—having once led but now dropping to fourth place.
On January 18, the second day of competition kicked off at the BWF World Tour Super 750 India Open 2023. In the remaining first-round matches, two more Chinese men’s doubles pairs took to the court. Ultimately, Liang Weikeng and Wang Chang delivered a hard-fought three-game victory against Indonesia’s veteran duo Ahsan/Setiawan, powerfully advancing to the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, He Jiteng and Zhou Haodong suffered a straight-games defeat against another Indonesian pair, Fikri/Maulana, marking their second consecutive week of being eliminated in the opening round.
After the Tokyo Olympics, both Li Junhui and Han Chengkai from the original men’s doubles lineup of China’s national badminton team retired early due to injuries, while Di Zujian was forced to leave the national team because of misconduct issues. As a result, starting with the Sudirman Cup and Thomas Cup following Tokyo, the Chinese team began experimenting with new pairings. By the start of the 2022 season, they had essentially finalized four entirely new men’s doubles combinations: Liu Yuchen/Ou Xuanyi, He Jiting/Zhou Haodong, Ren Xiangyu/Tan Qiang, and Liang Weikeng/Wang Chang.
After a season of training, team integration, and testing in international competitions, the Liu-Ou pair has steadily emerged as the team’s top duo, while the youngest pairing—Liang-Wang—is making rapid strides, quickly climbing to second place. In contrast, the He-Zhou and Qiang-Ren pairs have fallen behind, even facing challenges at one point when their low rankings prevented them from competing in elite-level events. Instead, they’ve had to focus on lower-tier tournaments like the International Challenge Series to earn crucial points and climb back up the rankings. Fortunately, by the end of the 2022 season, all four of China’s men’s doubles teams had secured spots within the world’s top 32, ensuring they’ll be able to compete regularly in the premier tourneys next season.
Among these four pairs, the He-Zhou partnership deserves special mention. In the 2021 Sudirman Cup final, they made their debut as a duo and stunned the eventual Japanese world champions, Takuro Kokubo and Yugo Kobayashi, helping China clinch the prestigious Sudirman Cup title. Later, in the Thomas Cup semifinals, they once again stepped up in the crucial China-Japan clash, defeating Kokubo and Watanabe Yuta’s newly formed pair—and showcasing their impressive potential. As a result, Chinese badminton officials decided to keep them together, placing high hopes on their future success. However, during the 2022 season, their performance fell short, leaving them in third place among the four competing pairs.
Unexpectedly, after the start of the new season, the pair suffered consecutive losses at the Malaysia Open and India Open to the Indonesian pairs Ahsan/Setiawan and Fikri/Maulana, becoming the only one of China’s four men’s doubles teams yet to secure a win. Although their current world ranking still places them ahead of Ren Xiangyu/Tan Qiang, if the strong Ren-Xiang pairing delivers impressive results in this week’s tournament, they’ll soon surpass He Zhou in the rankings—and move up to become China’s third-ranked men’s doubles team. It’s a pity, though, that the once-highly anticipated He-Zhou duo has now fallen all the way down to fourth place.
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