This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Most world championships are creations of the federations that run them: the federation forms first, then sanctions a championship to prove its authority. The World Xiangqi Championship ran the sequence backward. By the time delegates gathered in Beijing in 1993, the tournament was already on its third edition, meaning at least two earlier championships had already been organized, refereed and completed without any single permanent body claiming ownership of the event.
That third edition became the occasion for fixing the gap: representatives of twenty countries and regions, spanning Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia, used the tournament itself as the venue for a founding conference, emerging with the World Xiangqi Federation and Huo Yingdong of Hong Kong as its first president. Preparatory discussions had been underway since October 1988, so the federation's birth was less a sudden decision than the formal end point of five years of groundwork among the people already running the championship informally.