In reply to john arran:
> Yes, but what the chances of that?
It was once rumoured, with I know not what level of truth, that the Chinese communist party decided that it was going, in the course of 5-10 years, to become a major test playing nation. Not, obviously, in the way that India became a major (arguably THE major), cricketing nation, as a result of a ground-up swelling of enthusiasm from street level, finally becoming a super sport to the extent that Indians now refer to cricket as "an Indian game accidentally invented by the English", but as a top-down, apparatchik-driven decision that Cricket was a major international sport, China was an up and coming power, rising powers have a presence in international sports, so China must have a presence in test cricket.
It may have been entirely imaginary, but it is a delightful story about an authoritarian system seeing all the details and completely missing the point.