We all know that China is short of places at this year's VEX World Championships. However, China's quota this year is not only generated from the national competition, the tournament. There are a lot of institutional leagues. It's not fair to US VEX fans that we have to compete in national tournaments and tournaments while their games take up space. We won the Regionals and the all-around award, but we didn't have a chance to go to the World Championships. If the future of China's competitions are institutions to produce the world championship quota, then who will participate in the national competition? Everyone goes to the Institutional League. There are Chinese all-round awards, Design Awards are not fair enough, qualifying ranking in more than 30, skills competition ranking lower, can also be all-round awards. One wonders whether any of these deals have occurred.
I’m going to carefully step into this fray, only to point out that the Worlds slots are proportionally allocated from total numbers of teams registered in a given region vs the total throughout the world (and probably rounded up to a minimum of 1 spot in a few places where there aren’t many teams in that region).
As a for-instance (using publicly available data), looking at IQ ES, there were 7023 teams that recorded a skills score this season. Let’s assume for this that it’s all of the teams that are registered, for simplicity’s sake.
According to the skills list, all of China has 812 teams (again, gross assumption that all the teams recorded a skills score), which accounts for 11.5% of the teams in the world. Of the Worlds spots, 23 are allocated to China, corresponding to 5.4% of the Worlds slots.
As a point of comparison, Indiana (where I am) has 948 teams, of the 5303 total teams across the US (almost 18% of the teams in the US, and 12.5% of the world ). Indiana has 22 spots for Worlds this year, about 5.3% of the total spots.
Given that many Worlds spots would have been reserved for the increased number of Signature events, it looks like the allocation is relatively well distributed. I can understand the frustration of there being seemingly so few spots for Worlds given the large number of qualifying events, but given the geographical size of China, it is probably not practical for there being a single large event. Honestly it’s surprising that China is not divided into regions like California and Texas are, but that’s essentially how it looks like the Worlds qualifiers are being set up (I don’t know what they look like from a map perspective, to be clear).
Your frustration is understandable, but given the qualifying criteria being clearly laid out and adhered to, it shouldn’t be a surprising outcome in the end.
Also, since I won’t be able to edit my post, I misread and China has 28 spots, so more than Indiana, even though Indiana appears to have more teams than China (again, basing this off Skills list, since I don’t know if there’s public data on team registration for each region). So that’s 6.7% of the Worlds spots, more than any other region for ES.
In China, the competition is divided into four regions: East, west and west. But there are no places scheduled this year. Places are allocated for individual events in certain institutions. Institutional events don’t count as signature events or tournaments or even tryouts.
Like @EngineerMike, I’m not sure I want to enter this thread that seems to be sour grapes, but here I am.
The number of IQ teams has dropped. RECF has done the best they can in allocations. I’m sure that China regions are doing the best they can in selection of the top teams to send to regions. You didn’t go to the Delmarva Championship. So you could claim they did rock-papers-scissors-lizard-Spock because you didn’t see it. In fact those robots and teams won their way in.
Let’s give the robots coming from China the benefit that they also are the best robots from their region.
Sorry you didn’t get an invite.
What you don’t notice is that there is a competition in the picture in September, when the regional trials for China started, and they take precedence over the regional and national competitions and even the championship in China. I really don’t know what’s going on.
The whole VEXIQ season, regionals, nationals, championships, autographs, our team did it all. Thank you
I have no regrets about not being invited to the World Championships this year. I’ve been invited four years in a row.
I’m just complaining that it’s unfair to assign the world Championships to the Chinese team
I think that VEX in China is unique with how the overall competition is structured such that ways for qualification are spread across various tracks/tournaments with different qualifying processes, unlike most regions where there is a single ERC (States or Nationals) that would determine overall region qualification. In China VRC tournaments generally include a lot of provincial and local tournaments to qualify that are open to all teams (the Asia Open, Asia-Pacific Robotics Championship and the World Robot Contest for VRC) but there are also invitational tournaments that are more restrictive (such as the STEMSTAR, VEX Academy, SJTU or the international school tournaments), some of which also qualifying teams to VEX Worlds.
I’m quite sure that there has to be some sort of logical reason behind the RECF’s approach in allocating some of the spots (which, admittedly, isn’t the most transparent). I’ve spoken to one of the RSMs for China before regarding the rationale for the WYIS VIQRC Tournament in Wuhan and the TIS VRC Tournament in Tianjin, both open only to teams affiliated with international schools in China and not open to other teams, and she explained that this tournament was created (and each allocated one Worlds qualification spot) to accommodate for the many international school teams that are unable to build and compete with how early the Chinese VEX season is, but still give competing teams a chance to reach VEX Worlds. As much as this can be unfair to other teams in China, there is clear reasoning behind the allocation of one VRC and one VIQRC spot to these two tournaments and I can personally attest to the quality and competitiveness of those that actually do qualify to Worlds from these tournaments (for the VRC team from the Shanghai American School that qualified, 1294X, they got top 40 globally for skills).
I think that the distribution of spots for China isn’t necessarily unfair, but rather just that it lacks transparency on why spots were allocated in such a way (especially with the complex tournament structure in China), something of which I hope that the RECF (or whoever manages VRC and VIQRC in China) take into account more in the future.
Just a quick update to this thread:
A (very) similar post to the first one in the thread was made in the Chinese VEX Forum and received a response from one of the VEX staff members in China (who happens to also be the RSM I met in Tianjin, mentioned in my previous post!).
The reply specified that Worlds qualifying spots for China were allocated only to tournaments that met the requirements for being a qualifying tournament (which I believe refers to these requirements, the requirements of which are the same for a local qualifying tournament).
I still argue that the RSMs for China (who I believe are employed by VEX but not RECF) should endeavor to, at the very least, clarify the reasoning behind the allocation of spots. In China, some tournaments with 100s of teams participating (typically a regional tournament) would not get a qualification spot but an invitational tournament with 50 teams attending would receive 1 VRC MS and 1 VRC HS qualifying spot. These inconsistencies seem to also appear when looking at VIQRC tournaments, with many of the spots going to invitational tournaments for private leagues hosted by private nationwide institutions (which, I believe, are considered regional-level and not national-level tournaments)
I think that VEX in China could benefit from reforming the Worlds spot allocation process in future seasons by formally designating tournaments as ERCs or formalizing the designation of spots based on the existing tournament hierarchy in China (城市赛 City/Local, 区域赛 Area/regional，全国赛 National), ideally also clarifying the allocation of spots before hosting events (tournaments in China tend to specify World Championship qualifying spots in tournaments after the tournament is over on Robotevents). Not sure if someone from VEX China would see this post, but here it is.
I agree with your statement that there are three privately held competitions this year, which are equivalent to regional competitions, but the spots have indeed been divided.
I am participating in competitions in China, and both the national and national tournaments need to advance from regional competitions. Like this year, only the excellent awards and champions of the national competition are eligible to participate in the World Championships. Private competitions directly obtain spots, and I have won them relatively early.
The relationship between interests can be imagined. This is very unfair to Chinese students who enjoy VEX competitions. I hope the Chinese event manager can see it, otherwise in the future, this competition