The 2016 China Championship (officially the 2016 Evergrande China Championship) was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place between 1–5 November 2016 in Guangzhou, China.
It was the first staging of the tournament, and the plans were for it to become a full ranking event for the following three years, with the biggest prize pool for any event ever held outside the UK previously.
John Higgins became the inaugural winner by beating Stuart Bingham 10–7 in the final.
Prize fund
The breakdown of prize money from this year is shown below:
Winner: £200,000
Runner-up: £100,000
Semi-final: £50,000
Quarter-final: £30,000
Last 16: £15,000
Highest break: £10,000
Total: £650,000
The "rolling 147 prize" for a maximum break stands at £TBD.
Seeding list
The top 10 snooker players on the ranking list after the Shanghai Masters, along with the top 4 players on the one year prize money ranking list were invited to participate in the event. The remaining two players (Marco Fu and Liang Wenbo) were selected by the Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association. Mark Williams became eligible to participate after the withdrawal of world number 10 Ronnie O'Sullivan from the competition, as he was next in line to qualify through his official world ranking.
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