Zhu Chen

Zhu Chen, born in 1976, is a Chinese-born chess grandmaster who has played for Qatar since 2006. In 1988 she became the first Chinese player to win an international chess competition when she took the World Girls Under-12 Championship in Romania, and she added the World Junior Girls title in 1994 and 1996. She became a grandmaster in 1999, the seventh woman to do so. At 25 she won the 2001 to 2002 Women's World Chess Championship by beating Alexandra Kosteniuk 5 to 3 in the final, becoming the second Chinese woman champion after Xie Jun. In 2002 she knocked the men's world champion Ruslan Ponomariov out of the FIDE Grand Prix in Dubai, and in 2005 she won the Women's World Rapid Chess Championship in New York. She gave up the chance to defend her world title in 2004 because of a crowded schedule and her pregnancy. She became a Qatari citizen in 2006 and is married to Qatari grandmaster Mohammed Al-Modiahki. She plays for the Zhejiang club in the China Chess League.