By Zhenyu Li

The 2009 World Boxing Championships puts its finishing touches over the weekend in Milan, Italy with China, building on a fresh squad bagging two bronze medals.

Light flyweight Jiazhao Li and super heavyweight Zhilei Zhang both rolled into the Final Four with imposing victories over tough opposition for the eastern rising power before being halted one punch away from the finals.

Although this year's new faces made an impressive first showing on their international debut, China fell short of its medal competitions on Italian turf bringing home merely two bronzes, compared to the last three Championships, in which China garnered one silver in 2003, one gold in 2005 and one gold and four bronzes in 2007.

However, what China sets its sights on is beyond medals.

"Cultivating new blood is our prime purpose for going to the Worlds this year," Fuguo Cui, the vice president of the Chinese Boxing Association told me before the tournament.

"We aim for collecting information of our competitors through this edition of the Championships. We'll lay a series of well targeted plans, based on these collected info, for our preparation for the London Olympics."

China preserves its best pugilists by temporarily assembling a team consisting mostly of rookies who were making their international debut. The youngest athlete on the roster is only 20 years old and has no experience to speak of at the international level.

Olympic gold medalists Shiming Zou and Xiaoping Zhang, bronze medalist Silamu Hanati and the 2006 Asian Games gold medalist Qing Hu were all absent from the roster. 

"We saved our best boxers, say Shiming Zou, Xiaoping Zhang and the likes for the National Games," Ermin Tang, a coach from the Chinese national boxing team, told me on the eve of the squad leaving for Milan, Italy.

"The sports bureau (the General Administration of Sport of China) also didn't assign us any specific goals this time. The Boxing Championships collides with the National Games."

The quadrennial National Games of the People's Republic of China is the grandest sporting event nationwide. Its 11th edition will be held from October 11 to October 23, 2009.

The only three seasoned veterans in the nine-member national team were super heavyweight Zhilei Zhang, bantamweight Yu Gu and featherweight Yang Li.

Except for Li, a 2007 Worlds' bronze medalist, both Zhang and Gu had a decent run at the Championships.

Zhang, an Olympic silver medalist who carried out an intensive training program with Hall of Fame trainer Lou Duva before the premier boxing tournament in Pennsylvania, United States, clutched a bronze, while the 2008 Olympian Gu broke into the quarter finals before being edged by a two-point margin in the last 8.

Those newcomers are also up to the mark at Worlds.

Light flyweight Jiazhao Li pulled off the biggest win of his career by grabbing a bronze while middleweight Jianting Zhang made it to the quarter finals prior to losing only by a small margin.

Out of six rookies, five cruised to the second round with decisive wins and three into the last 16.

"Our prospects have made fair progress," Jinhua Gu, a handler of the Chinese national boxing team observed after the tournament. "There's certainly a gap between the world's boxing powerhouses and us, but I believe the future lies ahead will be bright and shiny." 

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