added the world individual title in Holland to his record and he will be spearheading the defending men's champions with 1995 world men's singles champion Kong Linghui also in the strong squad.France, comprising Jean-Philippe Gatien, Patrick Chila, Damien Eloi and Christophe Legout, all in the world's top 20, plus Sweden, with the evergreen former world champions Jan-Ove Waldner and Jorgen Persson, are China's major rivals.
France were silver medallists to China last time with Chila winning the only singles match against the all-conquering champions.
Wang Nan, the world singles champion from Holland, and Zhang Yining are the strongest in the Chinese women's team who, like the men, are defending titles won in Manchester, England in 1997.
The fight for the lower medals should be between North Korea, South Korea with Germany having the best chance of the European challenge.
The championships will be an interesting forerunner to the Sydney Olympics in September.
The top section of the men's and women's event each has four groups with an all-play-all format. The top teams in each group go through to the quarter-finals but the second-placed teams qualify for the last 16 and are joined by top teams from lower sections of the event.
The women's final is set for Friday and the men's on the Saturday.
Each team has three players and the individual games are played in a best-of-three format. The first team to win three games wins the match. The two best players in the team play a maximum of two games with the third player just one game.
Men
Group A: China, Belgium, Austria, Yugoslavia, Romania
Group B: France, Sweden, Russia, Netherlands, Slovakia, Taiwan
Group C: South Korea, Greece, Belarus, Italy, Czech Republic
Group D: Germany, Japan, Poland, England, Slovenia, Denmark
Women
Group A: China, Sweden, Belarus, Lithuania, Taiwan, Netherlands
Group B: South Korea, North Korea, Romania, Russia, Canada, France, Belgium
Group C: Germany, Japan, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Italy, Slovakia
Group D: South Korea, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ukraine, England
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