China will not participate in 2017 Asian Baseball Championship

Taipei, Sept. 30 (CNA) China will not participate in the 2017 Asian Baseball Championship to be held Oct. 2-8 in New Taipei, the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association reported Saturday.

The association's secretary-general, Lin Tsung-cheng (林宗成), said the Baseball Federation of Asia and the Chinese Taipei Baseball Association received the notification of the decision from the Chinese team.

Lin said it was due to a "delay in administrative procedures and also China's upcoming Golden Week holiday, which meant that while tickets to Taiwan had been booked, return tickets were unavailable, leading to the cancellation of the team's trip.

China participated in both the 2012 and 2015 Asian Baseball Championships that were also held in Taiwan, and this year's cancellation "was not due to politics," he emphasized.

There were originally eight teams set to compete in the competition -- Chinese Taipei, South Korea, the Philippines and Sri Lanka in group A, and Japan, China, Hong Kong and Pakistan in group B for the preliminaries.

Lin said that if there are no changes to the matches, any games involving China will be considered a forfeit and a win for the other team.