As I write, the World Snooker Championship is coming to a climax in Sheffield — with 22-year-old Wu Yize battling Britain’s Shaun Murphy for supremacy. If Wu wins he will be the second Chinese player to be crowned world champion, following the victory of Zhao Xintong last year.
In a surprising twist of fate, China and Britain have emerged as the two centres of world snooker excellence. Sheffield, once the steelmaking capital of the world, has become the snooker capital. Wu moved there aged 16 with his father and lived in a windowless flat, as he honed his game. There are now said to be some 150mn snooker fans in China. Peter Wilson, the UK ambassador in Beijing, has installed a snooker table in his living room as a tribute to this unlikely bond.
China’s emergence as a snooker superpower is a small sign that the country is beginning to develop “soft power” — the cultural cachet that can burnish a nation’s global image.