In 2012, it is true that Taiwan moved its GPG but I'm not sure it 'had to'. After all, the Vietnam GP went ahead with its scheduled time 2 weeks earlier than Chinese Taipei's original time and it had a very large field. I agree with scorpion1 that it is odd that China didn't fill the ranks. I guess the combination of juniors playing junior events and veterans resting between SS and TUC affected things. Still, the Korea GPG was in just as long a run last fall and Korea alone still fielded more women's doubles pairs than the entire draw in Changzhou, and that included only one pair of juniors. It is hard to believe that China couldn't find more. Korea drew heavily from the pro club system, which contributed more pairs than did the national team. I guess they might have expected more international participation. Also, China is huge so transporting players who feel they have no chance at beating Huang/Yu or Luo/Luo across such great distances just for the sake of filling out the draw might not be such a high priority. Korea tends to treat their GPG as a modified domestic event but that is a lot easier to do when every player in the country is within a 5h bus ride. I don't agree that it is up to the BWF to prevent this sort of thing. China had a bigger and stronger field for their $50,000 International Challenge. Unless the BWF denied permission to put the GPG in February, it would seem that China might be miscalculating. I'm sure the BWF was very keen to have the former Superseries as the most lucrative stop on the newly-rebranded GPG circuit, but I seriously doubt the idea to have an International Challenge as well originated outside of China. The other question is what you would have the BWF do. If so many countries wish to hold events and can find the sponsorship money, then it seems logical to let things go ahead. I suppose to avoid the 'dilution' that RedShuttle speaks of, you could keep the number of GPGs down. Still it's hard to argue that this is a solution. The one event that shut down because of lack of sponsorship money, the London GPG, had no problem whatsoever in attracting talent last year. I haven't heard why Macau was cancelled nor why it and Korea were knocked down to GP status despite still offering (or planning to, in Macau's case) GPG-level prize money. The other solution would be to move some GPGs into the slow spots of the calendar, but for that you have to find them. It seems that players like the lulls on the either side of the TUC/Sudirman and the Worlds so it seems unwise to fill these. February is a bigger mystery. Perhaps it plays the part of a winter break that doesn't happen between SSF and Korea. The former TUC qualifiers may have played a part and certainly Europe still used February for team championships and they use the first few days of the month for nationals.
Perhaps I spoke too soon. There were around 20 pairs in each doubles draw. Still, that was more than the China Masters so it's hard to see a causal relationship between that and its cancellation this year.
Indeed, for this instance, CHN could have, immediately after the closing date realizing the poor turnout for certain categories, quickly gathered the provincial level players to fill up the numbers. But,like you said, in a huge country like China, it could be problematic trying to approach several provinces (surely not all from Jiangsu alone) if not the whole country as being time-consuming and resource-intensive (eg, transport arrangement, selection of players, coaches, applying leave for the amateur players, etc). Even so, this is at best a stop-gap measure, not a solution, not to mention how it will look for a BWF level-3 international event to compose of 80% or so participants from the host nation. Obviously, BWF as the world-governing body has to take charge and take the lead in problem-solving by involving all the parties involved and not leave it to the individual member associations to work it out among themselves as each have their own priorities and interests that often conflict with others. As for the CHN Int'l Challenge, it's held in Feb, a relatively quiet month, without any SS events, even so the foreign players weren't that many and came from only a handful of nations but, more importantly, CHN 's 2nd tier and junior players were largely available to fill the gap, fortunately. For the CHN Masters, it's the first time it's relegated to a GPG from SS so less attraction and need for world's top 50 or 100 players to participate; the first time its schedule clashed, exactly overlapped, the NZ Open GP; the first time both the WJC and the BAC are being held in the same month as the CM; the first time it follows directly two SS tourneys back-to-back(remember the SIN Open SS was shifted to Apr from June) and one month before the biennial TUC - I mean with so many firsts and unforeseen circumstances, it's simply not right nor fair to blame the organizer/host for it; in fact, I wouldn't even expect them to foresee the turnout to be so poor in the WS and WD categories particularly, and,therefore prepare or forestall it by having a remarkable contingency plan, such as getting a bunch of provincial level players from various places to be on standby, amazing foresight if they did that. Like I said, now is not the time for the blame game and CHN certainly is not the only country that suffers as a result.(Maybe some of the foreign players are regretting now, who knows). To question why CHN did not or fail to fill the empty spaces is merely asking the obvious, a no-brainer, no doubt valid. But the more useful, helpful, constructive and positive thing to do is to understand where the problem lies, how it occur, what can be done to prevent it in future, and,should the worst or unexpected still happens, then what is the last resort, the alternatives, the viable propositions, the possible solutions. Say, if the CHN Masters organizer senses that something could be amiss, how about sending out invitations to the foreign players or through their respective associations well before the closing date to gauge their responses and take preemptive measures accordingly. Well, we all learn from our mistakes, that's how we improve. Only those who refuse to learn are doomed to repeat them. My 2 cents.
Regarding the Chinese Taipei'12 case, there must be a good reason why they decided to postpone it from its original schedule in Aug to Oct 2012 even though the Viet GP from 21-26 Aug was acceptably attended. The strange thing is changing it to Oct didn't really solve the problem of low turnout. Again, our purpose is not finger-pointing but to analyze the root cause and find feasible solution(s) for it. I strongly feel we should all be very appreciative of the organizer and value the sponsors for bringing an international tournament into being and it is for all the professional players to play their part as best they can to contribute to the success of the event. To see a particular event flop or fail to meet its normal target for lack of sufficient participants or have it cancelled, such as the Macau and the London GPGs for unclear reasons and the SCG Thai GPG for political reason - it's not something to gloat over, absolutely not, but, on the contrary, to feel sad about.
Like most diasters, there is more than one reason for this fiasco. BWF scheduled China Master to fail. Just count the ways: (1) two consecutive SS take out the top tier players; (2) WJC takes out the up and comers; (3) Asian Championship takes out another tranch of potential entries; (4) as if three daggers are not enough, NZ GP scrapes off a number of GP-level players who may be interested in venturing into higher level competitions. BWF should take a good look at the schedule. Technically, like not holding WC in Olympic years, maybe AC should not be held in Asian Game years. A schedule like Malaysia GPG/Singapore SS/Break/China Masters/India SS would look much more appealing to players, organizers, and sponsors. Even with the difficulty due to scheduling, CBA can still stage a GPG-calibre event with non-national team Chinese players. It is customary to field lots of local players in any competition, even at the SS level. Why CBA chose to leave such a broken field in China Masters is puzzling. The organizer obviously had access to the registration list early (e.g the Singapore Open organiser knew who is coming or not coming long before the registration deadline). They can do something about it if they choose to. Is it due to incompetence or internal politics? In any event, being in charge of promoting badminton in China, CBA must bear a big chunk of responsibilities for this to happen. In order to further develop badminton as a spectator sport, all parties should look into what they can do to avoid this kind embarrassment that can only make badminton look bad.
It just happened that thatbweek, many countries are preparing for TUC ..even the China did not send their top players and I doubt many Asian countries will send their top players to BAC also.. Honestly BWF had difficulty as all of us are fighting for schedule..thisnis due to Asian games and commonwealth games which throw everything out... Even INA had to schedule USM international series as same week with NZ... The reason why we sent quite a number of players as NZ, after knowing their schedule...they did ask INA to send our players to support their events and they are facing a high risk ..if not too many good players show up..they won't have any GP in NZ..also why we see so many Taiwanese players and top Thai players are co sting there as they are EXTREME's sponsor like Sudket,etc and Joe Wu is an international agent for EXTREME and spends a lot of time in Taiwan...
by the way..MACAU GPG is back..after the host is able to secure the stadium...not updated in BWF calendar yet...
Even our people ask why we can't move our International series to other time? Because we have 10 national circuits and 4 private tournaments which offer prize money from $22000 to $35000 plus we are not scheduling any tournament during Ramadhan..actually we did schedule International series as same week as BAC but been told it is not allowed to have any kind of tournaments during Continent championship
No one is blaming the CBA, I don't think. As has been pointed out elsewhere, there are often internal reasons why certain steps aren't taken. Your point about the Int'l Challenge is a good one. My question is why not scrap it and hold the China Masters at that time instead, to take advantage of the quiet time? If the CBA tried and the BWF said no, then I suppose you could blame the BWF. If no one thought of this, well, maybe it's something they could try in the future. Either way, players, organizers and media personnel are in for some short days in Changzhou and there will still be some excellent badminton to watch.
BWF created a mission impossible situation and CBA just left it to rot. Both should get the blame. February may seem quiet but it is the high time for Winter training for the Chinese team. Considering that was the only extended break in first four months of the year, other SS/GPG level players may also want to rest or train instead of playing tournaments at that time. China International is a special case as it was held where the Winter training base is for the Chinese team. Not only the second tier players (other than those going to Asia U19) were there, most first tier players were there too. It was probably viewed as a glorified internal training tournament. An International Challenge event is appropriate.
