Beijing: The Chinese Badminton Association is sending a strong team consisting of top players in all five categories to the 2023 Badminton Asia Championships (BAC) which will be held in Dubai from April 25 to April 30, 2023.
The president of the Chinese Badminton Association, Zhang Jun, said that the team needs to perform well in all categories and use BAC as a warm-up for the Sudirman Cup which will be played in Suzhou, China, between May 14 and May 21, 2023.
Shi Yiqi, lining up alongside teammate – 2023 All England champion, Li Shifeng, will be hunting for the men’s singles trophy.
The World No. 10 Shi Yuqi will open against No. 1 seed Jonathan Christie of Indonesia while World No. 11 Li Shifeng will meet World No. 59 Jeon Hyeok Jin of Korea and could set up a semi-final battle against World No. 4 and defending champion – Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia in the semi-finals.
In the 2023 season, the overall performance of China’s women’s singles has not been satisfactory and the Chinese women’s singles department is looking to redeem itself at the 2023 BAC.
Chen Yufei, He Bingjiao, and Han Yue will try their best to compete for the BAC title.
The China squad also has a strong chance of winning both the mixed doubles gold via No. 1 seeds Zheng Si Wei/Huang Ya Qiong and the women’s doubles through the top-seeded Chen Qing Chen/Jia Yi Fan.
Meanwhile, China also put tremendous focus on the men’s doubles category by sending four of its top men’s pairs including Liu Yuchen/Ou Xuanyi, Liang Weikeng/Wang Chang, He Jiting/Zhou Haodong, Ren Xiangyu/Tan Qiang to the event. This would be a great warm-up tournament for these top Chinese men’s pairs so that they could identify their problems and resolve them quickly before the start of the “Race to Paris” qualifying period starts on May 1, 2023, and will conclude on April 28, 2024.
