How it was won
China won four of the five gold medals at the Tokyo Games, which were held a year late, in 2021. Ma Long beat Fan Zhendong 4-2 in the men's singles final, 11-4, 10-12, 11-8, 11-9, 3-11, 11-7, and Chen Meng beat Sun Yingsha 4-2 in the women's. China beat Germany 3-0 in the men's team final and Japan 3-0 in the women's.
The exception was the mixed doubles, where Japan's Jun Mizutani and Mima Ito lost the first two games of the final to Xu Xin and Liu Shiwen and won 4-3. Both men's singles semi-finals went to seven games: Fan beat Lin Yun-Ju and Ma beat Dimitrij Ovtcharov, who took the bronze medal. Slovenia's Darko Jorgic knocked out the third seed, Tomokazu Harimoto, in the last 16, and Singapore's Yu Mengyu, unseeded, reached the women's semi-finals.