The newly formed competition will be the richest event on the table tennis calendar, it is claimed. 

Those confirmed to take part in the women's event include current world number five and multiple Olympic medallist Feng Tianwei of Singapore.

Tianwei won a women's team silver medal at Beijing 2008 and added singles and team bronze at London 2012.

World number six Cheng I-Ching of Chinese Taipei has also confirmed her intention to play alongside three-time European Champion Elizabeta Samara of Romania.

Yang Ha-Eun of South Korea, a mixed doubles champion at the 2015 World Table Tennis Championships with China’s Xu Xin, will also participate.

Hungary's Georgina Póta and Matilda Ekholm of Sweden are also set to take part.

World number 13 Jeon Jihee of South Korea and Thailand's 23-year old reigning Southeast Asian Games women’s singles champion Suthasini Sawettabut complete the announced women's entries.

In the men's competition, Rio 2016 semi-finalist and six-time Olympian Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus will compete.

Samsonov has competed at six consecutive Olympics between Atlanta 1996 and Rio 2016, but never won a medal.

Other notable names include men's world number 15 Joo Sae-hyuk of South Korea and former World Junior Table Tennis Championship singles champion Chen Chien-An of Chinese Taipei.

England’s Paul Drinkhall, a gold medallist in the mixed doubles with wife Joanna at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, will also compete.

Aleksandr Shibaev of Russia, a bronze medallist at the 2011 Gdansk-Sopot European Championships, completes the first list of players to be announced. 

"After sharing the concept of T2 APAC with many of the top players from all over the world in the past few months, we are very excited to unveil our first batch of players who have signed on for the inaugural season," said Jeff Chue, chief executive and commissioner of T2 APAC.

"We are confident that with the multi-faceted cast we have put together so far, the fans will be in for a fantastic season of T2 APAC action, and we will unveil the rest of our season one line-up very soon."

The competition, supported by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), the Asian Table Tennis Union (ATTU) and the Hong Kong Table Tennis Association (HKTTA), will feature 24 of the world's highest profile men's and women's players.

Competing in men’s, women’s and mixed-team league competitions, season one will include 228 men’s and women’s singles matches played entirely in Hong Kong from July to December 2017.

Matches will take place during breaks in the current international and domestic table tennis calendars.

The 24 players will battle for an unprecedented prize pool of $1.5 million (£1.2 million/€1.3 million) in the inaugural season.

The Chinese Table Tennis Super League is currently the only professional domestic competition in the Asia-Pacific region.

With no regional professional competitions to speak of, T2 APAC appears set to fill that void.