China Open (snooker)

The China Open was a professional snooker tournament. It was one of a number of ranking tournaments and began in 1997. The final champion is Neil Robertson, who won the event in 2019.

History
The first international snooker tournament in China was the China International in September 1997, a non-ranking tournament for the top 16 players and local players. The following season the tournament became ranking and was held in March. Then the name of the event was changed to China Open and was held in December, so there were two events in 1999. After the 2002 tournament the event was abandoned.

The event was revived for the 2004/05 season. Local wild-card players were invited to play against the qualifiers. The three Chinese players on the tour were invited to play as wild-cards, rather than qualify the usual way. Ding Junhui was one of them, and he won the tournament, but as he entered as a wild-card, he received no prize money nor ranking points.

The last edition of the tournament in 2019 took place at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, Chaoyang District, Beijing in early April, and it was usually the last ranking event before the World Championship. The 2020 edition was scheduled to take place, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused it to be cancelled: the subsequent restrictions meant it was not staged through 2021, 2022 and 2023. Despite the COVID restrictions ending in China, the tournament has not been restored to the calendar, with new events in Wuhan and Xi'an being staged in its place.

Statistics

 * Highest break: 147
 * James Wattana (1997)
 * Stephen Maguire (2008)
 * Neil Robertson (2010)
 * Judd Trump (2017)
 * Stuart Bingham (2018)
 * Ronnie O'Sullivan (2018)
 * Stuart Bingham (2019)