Published : 20/05/2026
In May 2026, young Chinese sensation Wu Yize (吳宜澤) triumphed at the World Snooker Championship. His victory secured back-to-back world titles for China in this pinnacle event, scripting a brand-new legend for Chinese snooker.
China now commands five slots within the world's top 16. From humble street entertainment to the pinnacle of the global stage, how did Chinese snooker stage such a monumental comeback? And what does the trajectory look like for the development of China's cue sports industry?
HK started the snooker craze in China
Billiard sports originated in the United Kingdom. In China, when speaking of snooker legends, many people will first think of Ding Junhui (丁俊暉), but they may not know about the relay of three whole generations behind it.
The story begins in the 1980s.
After the Reform and Opening-up started in the late 1970s, many Hong Kong merchants went to the Chinese Mainland to invest and open factories, and the billiards craze spread from Hong Kong to Guangdong Province and quickly swept across the country.
Billiards tables were set up everywhere, on main streets and in small alleys. For workers looking for recreation after work, playing billiards became the most popular daily entertainment.
At that time, there were no professional billiard halls, no formal training, let alone a professional system. But precisely because of this popularisation, many amateur masters began to emerge.
By the 1990s, first-generation pioneers like Guo Hua (郭華) and Jin Weifeng (金衛峰) travelled to the UK alone to compete. Although they did not achieve good results, they brought back professional playing styles, experience in preparing for competitions, and the points-based rules system, as well as the entire logic of connecting with international events.
With the rise of national competitions and clubs, the second generation of players mainly grew up within the club system, and Ding Junhui is a representative of this system.
Under this model, players relied on high-intensity solo practice and guidance from masters, and needed to self-fund their participation in competitions to pave their way into the professional circuit. To succeed, one had to rely more on personal experience and chance opportunities.
In the early 2000s, Ding Junhui finally made a strong breakthrough on the international stage, defeating the world's top players at the time and officially began his professional career.
China's 3rd generation of snooker talent emerged
Today, China's snooker scene is welcoming its third generation of successors—the new generation that has grown up in the academy system, and their training model has been completely upgraded.
How does this academy system work? And what are its advantages?
Firstly, unlike the master-apprentice system, the academy system has fully shifted to a model supported by sports science and data analysis.
The core of this model is the youth training system, where a promising young player starts training at the age of seven or eight, and after entering a professional academy for training, they advance through levels by playing in points-based tournaments.
This means that the player's upward path is clear. From youth points tournaments, domestic tours, Asian championships to the World Youth Championship, they rely on points and results to directly qualify for professional tournaments and the World Championship.
Behind them, there are management teams, sponsors, and support systems, so the entire development process has clear goals and pathways.
Through the youth training system, China has efficiently cultivated a large number of snooker talents.
World champions such as Wu Yize, Zhao Xintong (趙心童), and Bai Yulu (白雨露) are all top players cultivated by this system. Moreover, the vast majority of Chinese players currently active in international tournaments also came from the domestic professional youth training system.
So, just how strong is the current Chinese snooker contingent?
Read more: First post-2000s snooker world champion Wu Yize
A look at the 2025/26 season makes it clear: at the beginning of the season, Xiao Guodong (肖國棟) won the Wuhan Open championship; Zhao Xintong dominated the World Grand Prix, Players Championship, and Tour Championship, becoming the first-ever "Triple Crown" winner in a single season.
At the end of the season, which is this year's World Championship, a total of 11 Chinese players made it to the main draw, a record high number. Among the world's top 16 ranked players, there are five Chinese players.
Transformation of China's cue sports industry
In addition to the changes in the talent development model, China's cue sports industry chain has also completed its transformation.
Let's first look at the manufacturing of cue sports equipment.
Today, China accounts for over 70% of global equipment production, including accessories such as billiards tables, cues, and table cloths (baize). Dongguan in Guangdong Province, Yushan in Jiangxi Province, and Shengfang in Hebei Province have formed three major core industrial bases.
The entire industry has evolved from OEM manufacturing in the early years to developing its own patented research and development. Its products have become the designated tables for top international tournaments, firmly controlling the global supply chain.
Further downstream are the clubs. The number of billiards clubs nationwide has exceeded 100,000.
In first-tier cities, high-end billiards halls charge over ten thousand RMB for an annual membership card, focusing on business and social networking; community billiards halls in counties and towns, which charge just over 10 RMB for an hour of play, form the capillaries of the entire industry.
Billiards sports in China has another bonus dividend, which is events and media.
China hosts the most international tournaments in the world. Event copyrights, live broadcasts and rebroadcasts, and short video content form a huge commercial ecosystem. This not only makes billiards more entertaining and popular, but has also brought the largest revenue growth in the past decade.
Adding all of the above together, the Chinese cue sports industry has a conservatively estimated annual output value of 100 billion RMB, with a direct or indirect workforce of five million people.
The golden age of Chinese cue sports has arrived
After Wu Yize won the championship, Ding Junhui stated bluntly in a congratulatory post: "This is not just a breakthrough, but our era is dawning."
The core of this era is not the number of champions, but us becoming the "rule-makers".
In the past, snooker's tournament schedules, ranking points, and standards were all decided by the British.
Now, China's influence in the world snooker organisation is gradually increasing, but the practical question is, can China go a step further to reshape the global landscape of snooker? This is the first layer of meaning in this change of era.
Another key point is that the Chinese do not have to copy the British model of snooker development, but can forge their own path: one that is more down-to-earth, more social, and more suitable for the digital age.
Billiards entering shopping centres, being integrated into parent-child and team-building activities, using the internet to organise amateur tournaments, achieving "online matches + offline socialising"—these are all new ways of playing that do not exist in the UK.
On a deeper level is cultural confidence. China's youth training system has already cultivated world-class talent, and perhaps it will become a global model in the future, attracting more foreign players to come to China to learn the game.
From backstreet recreation in the 1980s to back-to-back World Championship titles today; from a lone pioneer venturing into the UK to a "lone leader" inspiring a "surging pack"; and from OEM contract manufacturing to mastering the global supply chain—Chinese snooker has engineered a total revolution in the span of 40 years.
The golden age of Chinese snooker has only just begun.