By Zhenyu Li

The Olympic boxing kingpin China keeps its forceful momentum in the ring at last year's Beijing Games by getting off to a flying start at the on-going World Boxing Championships.

China preserves its best fighters by dispatching a fairly young and inexperienced squad consists of nine boxers to the Worlds' battlefield, most of which were rookies and had no experiences at the international level.

The two Olympic gold medalists, light flyweight Shiming Zou and light heavyweight Xiaoping Zhang, and the Olympic bronze medalist welterweight Silamu Hanati did not take part. Lightweight Qing Hu, the 2006 Asian Games gold medalist and 2008 Olympian, who qualified to the last 16 of the Games was also absent from the Chinese national team.

"This is simply a temporarily assembled team with merely three weeks of intense training," Ermin Tang, a coach from the Chinese national boxing team told me on the eve of the squad leaving for Milan, Italy.

"We have not collected any data or information, this time, about our opponents. We'll just play to the score at the Championships. And that the sports bureau (the General Administration of Sport of China) also didn't assign us any specific goals."

The newly-mustered national boxing team was led by Zhilei Zhang, the super-heavyweight 2008 Olympic silver medalist who had worked with Hall of Fame trainer Lou Duva for a couple of weeks right before the World Boxing Championships in the United States. Yang Li, the bronze medalist of the 2007 World Boxing Championships and 2008 Olympian Yu Gu are the only other two seasoned pugilists in the troop.

"Sending such a fresh squad to the Worlds is mainly for the purpose of cultivation for our fresh blood," Tang confided. "Our best boxing athletes, say Shiming Zou, Xiaoping Zhang and the likes does not participate."

Lu Chao, another coach of the Chinese boxing national team and the handler of light heavyweight 2008 Olympic gold medalist Xiaoping Zhang told me that the 2011 World Boxing Championships, held in Busan, South Korea will have more strategic value for China, as it is one of the major qualifying events for the 2012 London Olympics.

In a nutshell, the Chinese team competing in the Worlds' battle field here and now is by no means the best that China could present.

However, eight out of nine boxing athletes from the fresh Chinese national team advanced to the second round of the tournament, mostly with impressive triumphs. Only one boxer from the heavyweight division, which is the traditional weak spot for Asian fighters made a blunder on his road to the second round of the tournament.

China's biggest hopeful super heavyweight Zhilei Zhang stroke the first stunning blow for team China when the Olympic silver medalist swept his Uzbekistan's opponent with an impressive 11-5 to breezed through the second round on the first day of the Championships.

On the same day, adding icing on the cake, the 28th ranked flyweight rookie Chao Li ignited a second bloom by completely outboxing his opponent Hiroyuki Misu from Japan 10-0 in the last stanza, en route to a 18-2 dominating win.

The opening victories were followed by 2008 Olympian bantamweight Yu Gu's 10-5 decision win over Guzman from Dominica, the 75kg weight class boxer Jianting Zhang's perfect 11-0 clean sweep over his rivalry from Greenland and lightweight newbie Qianxun Hu's 12-1 utter dominance over a boxing athlete from Malta.

In addition, featherweight Yang Li and light heavyweight Fanlong Meng both prevailed imposingly, respectively with decision wins of 13-1 and 17-6.

Light flyweight Jiazhao Li, the substitute for the Grand Slam boxing champion Shiming Zou advanced to the next round with no opposition according to the drawing result.

Up till now, the 6th day of the tournament, there have been four Chinese fighters, Chao Li, Jiazhao Li, Yu Gu and Jianting Zhang who sealed their place in the eighth-finals.

Whether Yang Li and Fanlong Meng are capable of joining the team later in the day with the likes of Chao Li remains to be seen.

Zhenyu Li is the bilingual sports and culture columnist for People's Daily. His agent can be reached at sunboxing@gmail.com.