Ping-pong diplomat's battle with cancer worsens

A Chinese table tennis great is in a serious condition with colorectal cancer, according to multiple media sources.

A Xinhua reporter, Tang Shizeng, published a photo on his Sina Weibo of the 72-year-old Zhuang Zedong at a Beijing hospital ward on Sunday, with his wife at his bedside.

"Zhuang's condition grew worse suddenly in July. The hospitals he used to live in in Beijing and Shanghai have all turned down his hospitalization request. He suffers 7/8 liver necrosis, and barely survives with a vein and a bile duct," wrote Tang.

Zhuang Zedong is a three-time world men's singles champion, winning a horde of table tennis events in the 1960s. His chance meeting with a US table tennis player, Glenn Cowan, during the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in 1971, later referred to as Ping-pong Diplomacy, was deemed to have led to the thawing of the icy China-US relations since 1949. He married his second wife, Chinese-born Japanese Sasaki Atsuko, in 1985.

In August 2008, Zhuang was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer, with complications in his liver and lungs.