Xie Jun

Xie Jun (born October 30, 1970) is a Chinese chess grandmaster and is the first Asian female to become a chess grandmaster. She had two separate reigns as Women's World Chess Champion, from 1991 to 1996 and again from 1999 to 2001. Xie is one of three women to have at least two separate reigns, besides Elisaveta Bykova and Hou Yifan. Xie Jun is the current president of the Chinese Chess Association. In 2019, she was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame. Early life and career Although born in Baoding, Hebei in 1970 and raised in Beijing, the ancestral home of Xie and her parents is Liaoyuan, Jilin. At the age of six Xie began to play Chinese chess, and by the age of 10 she had become the girls' xiangqi champion of Beijing. At the urging of government authorities, she soon began playing international chess. Despite indifferent training opportunities, Xie became the Chinese girls' chess champion in 1984. In 1988 she tied for second–fourth places at the World Junior Girls' Championship in Adelaide; as the highest-placed Asian player in the tournament, she earned the Asian Junior Girls' Championship title. At the age of 20 Xie won the right to challenge for the women's world title, and in 1991 she defeated Maia Chiburdanidze of Georgia, who had held the title since 1978, by a score of 8½–6½. Just as Bobby Fischer ended Soviet domination in the open section in 1972 after 24 years, Xie ended Soviet domination in the women's section after 41 years. In 1993 Xie successfully defended her title against Nana Ioseliani (winning the match 8½–2½). In the summer of 1994 she was awarded the full Grandmaster title; the sixth woman ever to be awarded that title. She lost the 1996 Women's World Chess Championship to Susan Polgar of Hungary (8½–4½) but regained the title in 1999 by defeating another championship finalist, Alisa Galliamova (8½–6½), after Polgar refused to accept match conditions and forfeited her title. In 2000, FIDE changed the format of the world championship to a knock-out system, and Xie won the title again, beating fellow Chinese player Qin Kanying 2½–1½ in the final.