The 1963 match between China and the Soviet Union ended in Hangzhou, where the last two rounds — six games in all — were played on 22 and 24 September. The visiting trio of Andor Lilienthal, Mikhail Yudovich and Vladimir Zagorovsky took the leg 5–1 and the twenty-four-game match 19–5. Lilienthal won both his Hangzhou games to finish the tour on 7 out of 8, the best score of anyone on either side.
Three cities in September
China had invited the Soviet team for a return visit five years after three Soviet masters swept a short match in Guangzhou in December 1958. Between 14 June and 15 July 1963 the National Sports Committee assembled a national training squad of more than twenty players, and from the qualifying tournament that followed it selected eight in early September: Xu Tianli, Jian Mingji, Deng Wenxiang, Xu Hongshun, Zhang Donglu, Huang Xinzhai, Feng Bingrong and Li Zhongjian.
The match ran in three legs. Three rounds at the Yuexin Palace in Beijing's Beihai Garden from 8 to 12 September went 7½–1½ to the Soviets; three more at the Shanghai Sports Club from 16 to 20 September went 6½–2½; and these two closing rounds in Hangzhou went 5–1. The final margin was 19–5 — fifteen Soviet wins, eight draws and a single loss, that one to Huang Xinzhai in Shanghai. Heavy as the defeat was, it was a clear improvement on 1958, when the Chinese had lost every game.
The Hangzhou games
Five Chinese players took the board here: Xu Tianli, Deng Wenxiang, Feng Bingrong, Xu Hongshun and Xu Jialiang. Both Chinese half points came on 22 September, when Xu Tianli held Yudovich and Deng Wenxiang drew with Zagorovsky; the round of 24 September went 3–0 to the visitors. All six games of the leg are preserved here, in source order.
The Soviet trio brought real credentials to a goodwill tour. Lilienthal was one of FIDE's original 1950 grandmasters — the man who had beaten Capablanca with a queen sacrifice at Hastings 1934–35, and Tigran Petrosian's trainer from 1951 to 1960. Zagorovsky was the reigning ICCF world correspondence champion, holding that title from 1962 to 1965. Yudovich, an international master since 1950, would win the Soviet correspondence championship in 1966. Across the eight games each played they finished on 7, 6½ and 5½ points respectively.
The visit came late in a narrow window. Chess as distinct from xiangqi had only been recognised as a competitive sport in China in 1956, and the Chess Association of China was founded in 1962 as a minor affiliate of the Chinese Xiangqi Association. One more exchange followed — a Chinese trip to Moscow in 1964 and a Soviet return in December 1965 — before the game was banned outright for the first eight years of the Cultural Revolution.
Result
We have 6 games from this event. The full results are not known, so there is no cross table; the games are listed in source order.