Fan Zhendong sits top of the revamped men's table tennis world rankings ©Getty Images

Chinese players Fan Zhendong and Chen Meng are top of the new International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Table Tennis World Ranking, which will be updated weekly from now on.

The new system replaces the ITTF World Rankings and starts with players retaining 80 per cent of their December 2020 ITTF World Ranking points.

Every seven weeks, these points will be progressively reduced by 10 per cent up until week 49 of 2021.

Currently, no changes have been made to the men's or women's top five, with Xu Xin, Ma Long and Lin Gaoyuan of China and Tomokazu Harimoto of Japan sitting in the top part of the men's standings, behind Fan.

Sun Yingsha is second in the women's rankings, followed by Mama Ito of Japan and Chinese pair Wang Manyu and Ding Ning.

Due to the launch of the World Table Tennis (WTT) Series in 2021, the new ranking structure will incorporate Grand Smashes, the WTT Cup Finals, WTT Champions and WTT Contender Series events for the first time.

Winners of the Grand Smash events will collect 2,000 ranking points - the same as winners of Olympic titles and the World Table Tennis Championships.

There will be up to four Grand Smashes contested every year, similar to tennis' Grand Slam system.

WTT Cup Finals winners will earn 1,500 points, while 1,000 points will be given to victors of WTT Champions events.

WTT Star Contender events will have 600 points on offer to the winner, while WTT Contender events will offer 400 points.

Chen Meng remains the women's singles world number one ©Getty Images
Chen Meng remains the women's singles world number one ©Getty Images

The Allocation of points per round will also change under the new system, with players being rewarded for their performance proportionally.

Qualifying players will be able to add any ranking points earned in the qualifying rounds as well as the main draw.

An updated ITTF Table Tennis World Ranking is to be released weekly on Tuesdays.

Performances at the upcoming WTT Youth Series will also be incorporated into a new ranking structure.

WTT was set up by the ITTF in August 2019 and was formally launched in March 2020 to run the governing body's commercial and events business.

This has been criticised by some ITTF member associations, however, with the German Table Tennis Federation (DTTB) claiming the implementation of WTT had violated "essential principles of good governance and transparency".

The DTTB had raised concerns regarding the ranking points attributed to WTT events, claiming these contests would soon be viewed as having a higher value than the Olympic Games or World Championships.

Qatari capital Doha is to stage two WTT events in March, as a hub concept is pursued in light of the coronavirus pandemic