Chinese official cancels visit to Asian games
Chinese official cancels visit to Asian games
TOKYO (Agencies): Chinese State Councillor Li Tieying has canceled a visit to Japan for the Asian Games in protest at plans for the Taiwanese deputy prime minister to attend, Japanese news media reported yesterday.
Li was scheduled to arrive in Japan on Monday and pay a courtesy call on Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama.
The cancellation is China's latest expression of anger in a diplomatic dispute with Japan that developed after the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) invited Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui to the games, due to start in Hiroshima on Oct. 2.
Beijing, which views Taiwan as a renegade province, vehemently opposes any visit by top Taiwan officials to Japan, and threatened to boycott the games.
Japan does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan and has instead recognized Beijing since 1972.
Lee seemed to have defused the issue earlier this week when he canceled the proposed visit, but the row continued when Japan decided to allow Hsu to attend.
Date refuses
Meanwhile Kimiko Date, world number seven and by far the continent's best female tennis player, is not impressed by the prospect of a virtually guaranteed Asian Games gold medal on home territory.
Her contrary attitude to the event even threatened, at one stage, to throw Japanese plans for the event into disarray.
Date, who will be 24 on Wednesday, quarreled with the Japan Tennis Association during the U.S. Open and said she would not take part in the Games.
"I have no incentive to confirm I'm the number one player in Asia," she stormed.
Date, three-time winner of the Japan Open, has since been persuaded to rejoin the squad. But her preparations suffered a new setback at last week's Tokyo women's tournament when she was beaten by compatriot Mana Endo - 5-7, 6-2, 4-6 - last Thursday.
Since then the Games host nation's tennis idol has refused to talk about the event.
Japan also has Asia's number two ranked player in Naoko Sawamatsu and Endo is fourth.
But even Sawamatsu is not over-optimistic of her chances. She beat Taiwan's top player Wang Shi-ting 6-0, 4-6, 6-1 last Wednesday but crashed out in the Tokyo tournament a day later - in two sets to young compatriot Ai Sugiyama.
Sawamatsu said she would suffer on Hiroshima's hard courts. But the present plan is for Date and Sawamatsu to take on the singles. The in-form Endo, who beat world number eight Lindsay Davenport to reach the U.S. Open fourth round, joins Nana Miyagi in the doubles.
Yayuk Basuki
The main rivals to Date and Sawamatsu will be Wang, Indonesia's Yayuk Basuki, China's number one Li Fang and South Korea's Park Sung-hee.
"It's going to be quite tough, because there are a lot of top players like Date, Sawamatsu and Yayuk," said Wang, now 37th in the world.
The hard courts favor world number 28 Yayuki, defending champion in the women's doubles and mixed doubles, who beat Wang after a close final set in Jakarta in April.
Li and her teammate Chen Li, silver medalist in Beijing in 1990, stayed home to prepare while Park, first-round loser to Miyagi last Tuesday, will concentrate on doubles events.
"The women's doubles and mixed doubles are the most important to our team. I like to play in the singles more, but now I practice a lot for doubles," said Park who has never played Date or Sawamatsu.
The men's contest looks out of reach of Japan with Leander Paes, India's former junior champion at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, the favorite.
India, whose lone gold in Beijing came in kabaddi, could get two or three titles through Paes, who fired his country into the Davis Cup semifinals last year.
North Korea
North Korea, which will not take part in next month's Asian Games in Japan, will not send officials to Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) meetings there either, news reports said Saturday.
The games' organizing committee said it had received a notice to that effect from the North Korean Olympic Committee under the name of its secretary general Chang Ung, Jiji and Kyodo news agencies said.
In June North Korea said it would boycott the Asian Games in Hiroshima because of worsening bilateral ties with Japan. But the possibility remained that the country could participate in the OCA general meeting there on Oct. 5-6.
Iraq is the only other member country not taking part in the continent's biggest sporting event as its membership was suspended in the wake of its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.