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Washington Naval Treaty

The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference in Washington, D.C. from November 1921 to February 1922 and signed by the governments of the British Empire (including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India), United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.

The treaty was concluded on February 6, 1922. Ratifications of that treaty were exchanged in Washington on August 17, 1923, and it was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on April 16, 1924.

Later naval arms limitation conferences sought additional limitations of warship building. The terms of the Washington Naval Treaty were modified by the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. By the mid-1930s, Japan and Italy renounced the treaties, while Germany renounced the Treaty of Versailles which had limited its navy. Naval arms limitation became increasingly difficult for the other signatories.

Background
Immediately after World War I, Britain still had the world's largest and most powerful navy, followed by the United States and more distantly by Japan, France and Italy. The British Royal Navy interned the defeated German High Seas Fleet in November 1918. The Allies had differing opinions concerning the final disposition of the Imperial German Navy, with the French and Italians wanting the German fleet divided between the victorious powers and the Americans and British wanting the ships destroyed. The negotiations became mostly moot after the German crews scuttled most of their ships on 21 June 1919.

News of the scuttling angered the French and the Italians, with the French particularly unimpressed with British explanations that the fleet guarding the Germans had then been away on exercises. Nevertheless, the British joined their allies in condemning the German actions, and no credible evidence emerged to suggest that the British had collaborated actively with the Germans with respect to the scuttling. The Treaty of Versailles, signed a week later on 28 June 1919, imposed strict limits on the sizes and numbers of warships which the newly-installed German government had the right to build and maintain.

The Americans, the British, the French, the Italians, and the Japanese had been allies during World War I, but with the German threat seemingly finished, a naval arms race between the erstwhile allies seemed likely in the next few years. US President Woodrow Wilson's administration had already announced successive plans for the expansion of the US Navy from 1916 to 1919 that would have resulted in a massive fleet of 50 modern battleships.

In response, the Japanese Diet in 1920 finally authorised construction of warships to enable the Imperial Japanese Navy to attain its goal of an "eight-eight" fleet programme, with eight modern battleships and eight battlecruisers. The Japanese started work on four battleships and four battlecruisers, all of which were much larger and more powerful than those of the classes that they were replacing.

The 1921 British Naval Estimates planned four battleships and four battlecruisers, with another four battleships to follow the subsequent year.

The new arms race was unwelcome to the American public. The US Congress disapproved of Wilson's 1919 naval expansion plan, and the 1920 presidential election campaign resulted in politicians in Washington resuming the non-interventionalism of the prewar era, with little enthusiasm for continued naval expansion. Britain also could ill afford any resumption of battleship construction, given the exorbitant cost.

In late 1921, the US became aware that Britain was planning a conference to discuss the strategic situation in the Pacific and Far East regions. To forestall the British plan and to satisfy domestic demands for a global disarmament conference, Warren Harding's administration called the Washington Naval Conference in November 1921.

The Conference agreed to the Five-Power Naval Treaty as well as a Four-Power Treaty on Japan and a Nine-Power Treaty on China.

Negotiations
At the first plenary session held November 21, 1921, US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes presented his country's proposals. Hughes provided a dramatic beginning for the conference by stating with resolve: "The way to disarm is to disarm". The ambitious slogan received enthusiastic public endorsement and likely abbreviated the conference while helping ensure his proposals were largely adopted. He subsequently proposed the following:
 * A ten-year pause or "holiday" of the construction of capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers), including the immediate suspension of all building of capital ships.
 * The scrapping of existing or planned capital ships to give a 5:5:3:1.67:1.67 ratio of tonnage with respect to Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy respectively.
 * Ongoing limits of both capital ship tonnage and the tonnage of secondary vessels with the 5:5:3 ratio.

Capital ships
The proposals for capital ships were largely accepted by the British delegation. However, they were controversial with the British public. Britain could no longer have adequate fleets in the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Far East simultaneously, which provoked outrage from parts of the Royal Navy.

Nevertheless, there was huge demand for the British to agree to the limits and reductions: the risk of war with the Americans was increasingly regarded as merely theoretical as there were very few policy differences between the two Anglophone powers; continued naval spending was unpopular in Britain throughout the empire; and Britain was implementing major budget reductions due to the post–World War I recession.

The Japanese delegation was divided. Japanese naval doctrine required the maintenance of a fleet 70% the size of that of the United States, which was felt to be the minimum necessary to defeat the Americans in any subsequent war. The Japanese envisaged two separate engagements, first with the U.S. Pacific Fleet and then with the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. It calculated that a 7:5 ratio in the first battle would produce enough of a margin of victory to be able to win the subsequent engagement and so a 3:5 ratio was unacceptable because a 3:5 total fleet size ratio would imply a 6:5 ratio in the first battle. Nevertheless, the director of the delegation, Katō Tomosaburō, preferred to accept the latter to the prospect of an arms race with the United States, as the relative industrial strength of the two nations would cause Japan to lose such an arms race and possibly suffer an economic crisis. At the beginning of the negotiations, the Japanese had only 55% of the capital ships and 18% of the GDP of the Americans.

His opinion was opposed strongly by Katō Kanji, the president of the Naval Staff College, who acted as his chief naval aide at the delegation and represented the influential "big navy" opinion that Japan had to prepare as thoroughly as possible for an inevitable conflict against the United States, which could build indefinitely more warships because of its huge industrial power.

Katō Tomosaburō was finally able to persuade the Japanese high command to accept the Hughes proposals, but the treaty was for years a source of controversy in the navy.

The French delegation initially responded negatively to the idea of reducing their capital ships' tonnage to 175,000 tons and demanded 350,000, slightly above the Japanese limit. In the end, concessions regarding cruisers and submarines helped persuade the French to agree to the limit on capital ships.

Another issue that was considered critical by the French representatives was the Italian request of substantial parity, which was considered to be unsubstantiated; however, pressure from the American and the British delegations caused the French to accept it. That was considered a great success by the Italian government, but parity would never actually be attained.

There was much discussion about the inclusion or exclusion of individual warships. In particular, the Japanese delegation was keen to retain their newest battleship Mutsu, which had been funded with great public enthusiasm, including donations from schoolchildren. That resulted in provisions to allow the Americans and the British to construct equivalent ships.

Cruisers and destroyers

Hughes proposed to limit secondary ships (cruisers and destroyers) in the same proportions as capital ships. However, that was unacceptable to both the British and the French. The British counterproposal, in which the British would be entitled to 450,000 tons of cruisers in consideration of its imperial commitments but the United States and Japan to only 300,000 and 250,000 respectively, proved equally contentious. Thus, the idea of limiting total cruiser tonnage or numbers was rejected entirely.

Instead, the British suggested a qualitative limit of future cruiser construction. The limit proposed, of a 10,000 ton maximum displacement and 8-inch calibre guns, was intended to allow the British to retain the Hawkins class, then being constructed. That coincided with the American requirements for cruisers for Pacific Ocean operations and also with Japanese plans for the Furutaka class. The suggestion was adopted with little debate.

Submarines
A major British demand during the negotiations was the complete abolition of the submarine, which had proved so effective against them in the war. That proved impossible, particularly as a result of French opposition, which demanded an allowance of 90,000 tons of submarines, and the conference ended without an agreement to restrict submarines.

Pacific bases
Article XIX of the treaty also prohibited the British, the Japanese and the Americans from constructing any new fortifications or naval bases in the Pacific Ocean region. Existing fortifications in Singapore, the Philippines and Hawaii could remain. That was a significant victory for Japan, as newly-fortified British or American bases would be a serious problem for the Japanese in the event of any future war. That provision of the treaty essentially guaranteed that Japan would be the dominant power in the Western Pacific Ocean and was crucial in gaining Japanese acceptance of the limits on capital ship construction.

Terms
The treaty strictly limited both the tonnage and construction of capital ships and aircraft carriers and included limits of the size of individual ships.

The tonnage limits defined by Articles IV and VII (tabulated) gave a strength ratio of approximately 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 for the UK, the United States, Japan, Italy, and France, respectively.

The qualitative limits of each type of ship were as follows:
 * Capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers) were limited to 35,000 tons standard displacement and guns of no larger than 16-inch calibre. (Articles V and VI)
 * Aircraft carriers were limited to 27,000 tons and could carry no more than 10 heavy guns, of a maximum calibre of 8 inches. However, each signatory was allowed to use two existing capital ship hulls for aircraft carriers, with a displacement limit of 33,000 tons each (Articles IX and X). For the purposes of the treaty, an aircraft carrier was defined as a warship displacing more than 10,000 tons constructed exclusively for launching and landing aircraft. Carriers lighter than 10,000 tons, therefore, did not count towards the tonnage limits (Article XX, part 4). Moreover, all aircraft carriers then in service or building (Argus, Eagle, Furious, Hermes, Langley and Hōshō) were declared "experimental" and not counted (Article VIII).
 * All other warships were limited to a maximum displacement of 10,000 tons and a maximum gun calibre of 8 inches (Articles XI and XII).

The treaty also detailed by Chapter II the individual ships to be retained by each navy, including the allowance for the United States to complete two further ships of the Colorado class and for the UK to complete two new ships in accordance with the treaty limits.

Chapter II, part 2, detailed what was to be done to render a ship ineffective for military use. In addition to sinking or scrapping, a limited number of ships could be converted as target ships or training vessels if their armament, armour and other combat-essential parts were removed completely. Some could also be converted into aircraft carriers.

Part 3, Section II specified the ships to be scrapped to comply with the treaty and when the remaining ships could be replaced. In all, the United States had to scrap 30 existing or planned capital ships, Britain 23 and Japan 17.

Effects
The treaty marked the end of a long period of increases of battleship construction. Many ships that were being constructed were scrapped or converted into aircraft carriers. Treaty limits were respected and then extended by the London Naval Treaty of 1930. It was not until the mid-1930s that navies began to build battleships once again, and the power and the size of new battleships began to increase once again. The Second London Naval Treaty of 1936 sought to extend the Washington Treaty limits until 1942, but the absence of Japan or Italy made it largely ineffective.

There were fewer effects on cruiser building. The treaty specified 10,000 tons and 8-inch guns as the maximum size of a cruiser, but that was also the minimum size cruiser that any navy was willing to build. The treaty began a building competition of 8-inch, 10,000-ton "treaty cruisers", which gave further cause for concern. Subsequent naval treaties sought to address that by limiting cruiser, destroyer and submarine tonnage.

Unofficial effects of the treaty included the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Although it was not part of the Washington Treaty in any way, the American delegates had made it clear that they would not agree to the treaty unless the British ended their alliance with the Japanese. The 1921 Imperial Conference earlier in the year had already decided not to renew the Alliance.

Violations
In 1935, the French Navy laid down the battleship FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu; combined with the two Dunkerque-class battleships also under construction, which placed the total tonnage over the 70,000-ton limit on new French battleships until the expiration of the treaty. The keel laying of FRENCH BATTLESHIP Jean Bart in December 1936, albeit less than three weeks before the treaty expired, increased the magnitude of France's violation by another 35,000 tons. The French government dismissed British objections to the violations by pointing out that Britain had signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935, which unilaterally dismantled the naval disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. German naval rearmament threatened France, and according to the French perspective, if Britain freely violated treaty obligations, France would similarly not be constrained.

Italy repeatedly violated the displacement limits on individual ships and attempted to remain within the 10,000-ton limit for the Trento-class cruisers built in the mid-1920s. However, by the Zara-class cruisers in the late 1920s and early 1930s, it had abandoned all pretense and built ships that topped 11000 LT by a wide margin. The violations continued with the Littorio-class battleships of the mid-1930s, which had a standard displacement in excess of 40000 LT. The Italian Navy nevertheless misrepresented the displacement of the vessels as being within the limits imposed by the treaty.

Japanese denunciation
The naval treaty had a profound effect on the Japanese. With superior American and British industrial power, a long war would very likely end in a Japanese defeat. Thus, gaining strategic parity was not economically possible.

Many Japanese considered the 5:5:3 ratio of ships as another snub by the West, but it can be argued that the Japanese had a greater force concentration than the US Navy or the Royal Navy. The terms also contributed to controversy in high ranks of the Imperial Japanese Navy between the Treaty Faction officers and their Fleet Faction opponents, who were also allied with the ultranationalists of the Japanese army and other parts of the Japanese government. For the Treaty Faction, the treaty was one of the factors that had contributed to the deterioration of the relationship between the American and the Japanese governments.

Some have also argued that the treaty was one major factor in prompting Japanese expansionism by the Fleet Faction in the early 1930s. The perception of unfairness resulted in Japan's renunciation of the Second London Naval Treaty in 1936.

Isoroku Yamamoto, who later masterminded the attack of Pearl Harbor, argued that Japan should remain in the treaty. His opinion was more complex, however, in that he believed the United States could outproduce Japan by a greater factor than the 5:3 ratio because of the huge American production advantage of which he had expert knowledge since he had served with the Japanese embassy in Washington. After the signing of the treaty, he commented, "Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil-fields in Texas knows that Japan lacks the power for a naval race with America." He later added, "The ratio works very well for Japan – it is a treaty to restrict the other parties." He believed that other methods than a spree of construction would be needed to even the odds, which may have contributed to his advocacy of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor.

On December 29, 1934, the Japanese government gave formal notice that it intended to terminate the treaty. Its provisions remained in force formally until the end of 1936 and were not renewed.

Influences of cryptography
What was unknown to the participants of the Conference was that the American "Black Chamber" (the Cypher Bureau, a US intelligence service), commanded by Herbert Yardley, was spying on the delegations' communications with their home capitals. In particular, Japanese communications were deciphered thoroughly, and American negotiators were able to get the absolute minimum possible deal that the Japanese had indicated they would ever accept.

As the treaty was unpopular with much of the Imperial Japanese Navy and with the increasingly active and important ultranationalist groups, the value that the Japanese government accepted was the cause of much suspicion and accusation among Japanese politicians and naval officers.

title: Washington Naval Treaty


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Nicholas Ribic

Nicholas "Nick" Ribic (born 1974) is a Canadian who fought in the Bosnian Serb Army where he was also known as Nikola Ribić. In 1995, he took four United Nations peacekeepers hostage and used them as a human shield to try to force a halt to the ongoing bombing of Serb-held territories in Bosnia by NATO forces.

He was the first Canadian to be prosecuted for a hostage-taking committed outside the country. Ribic was charged under a section of the Criminal Code of Canada on jurisdiction that had never been used before that allows Canada to claim jurisdiction over kidnapping and hostage-taking offences outside of the country when a Canadian perpetrator and/or victim is involved.

Ribic's hostage was a fellow Canadian, Capt. Patrick Rechner, working in Bosnia as an unarmed U.N. military observer. The May 1995 worldwide television and newspaper coverage showed the photo of Capt. Rechner chained to a lightning rod at an ammunition bunker in the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale. Ribic was in the uniform of a Bosnian Serb soldier, wielding an AK47 rifle, in the company of other Serb soldiers. Held for 24 days, the photo of Capt. Rechner became a symbol of the United Nations' incapacity to deal with Serb military offensives.

Hostage taking
Ribic travelled to Republika Srpska in 1992, ostensibly because he "want[ed] to fight Muslims". There he joined the Bosnian Serb Army as a volunteer. On May 24, 1995, British General Rupert Smith, leading a United Nations contingent, warned both the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs in Pale to cease street fighting and shelling, or risk an air strike from NATO aircraft. The Serbian faction ignored the warning and was hit by a retaliatory airstrike which dropped two bombs on their base ten kilometres south of the city the next day.

The day after the bombs were dropped, it is alleged that Ribic and other Bosnian Serbs walked into the United Nations office with AK-47s and took several staff members hostage, including Russians Capt. Zidlik and Capt. Pavel Teterevsk, and Canadian Capt. Patrick Rechner. They demanded that Major Guy Lavender phone Smith, and subsequently warned the General that bombing of Serb targets had to cease or the hostages would be killed.

The hostages were taken to the Serbian base south of the city, where Rechner was handcuffed to a lightning rod outside a warehouse being used to store mortar rounds. Ribic then allegedly phoned the United Nations and warned that "The three UN observers are at the site of the warehouse. Any more bombings, they'll be the first to go." The prisoners were noted to have been "treated well" during their confinement, and were voluntarily returned to the United Nations office on June 18.

Arrest and subsequent trials
In 2000, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police traced Ribic down to his new home in Germany, and he was arrested in February. Nine months later, he was extradited to face charges in Canada, where he was defended by lawyer D'Arcy DePoe.

Ribic's trial began in Ottawa, Ontario on October 8, 2002. The trial however unraveled three months later when judge Douglas Cunningham of the Supreme Court of Ontario declared a mistrial on 20 January 2003, after only nine days of testimony. Ribic was retried in 2005 for hostage taking and allegedly threatening death. His lawyer, D'Arcy DePoe, called it "one of the most unusual criminal trials in Canadian history" as it was the first time a Canadian had been tried in this manner. "While this is an unusual form of trespass, it is submitted that NATO dropping 2,000-pound bombs on this property was clearly a trespass."

This time, there was no mistrial declared and Ribic was convicted and found guilty of hostage taking and threatening death and sentenced to three years in prison. Two witnesses from the Canadian Armed Forces, known only as Witness A and Witness B, were only allowed to testify by transcript during Ribic's 2005 trial.

In 2008, Ribic appealed the decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Ribic's attorney DePoe objected to the fact that the two witnesses from the Canadian Armed Forces were only allowed to testify by transcript.

The court rejected Ribic's appeal, concluding that Ribic had no connection to the ammunition bunkers that entitled him to defend them from trespassing and that the trial judge's handling of Witness A and Witness B was acceptable.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Nicholas Ribic


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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Arab-Israeli conflict general remarks

I can't agree to that, see the Talk page for reasons. --Uri

Some thoughts on how bias is brought in articles about the conflict.

First, there is often a missing distinction on political arguments and reasonings.

If you write about politics, you have to be aware of the peculiarities of political language. If one side is saying something, it doesn't imply that they are also meaning it and neither that they for themselves are believing it.

Take for example the article on UN Security Council Resolution 242. The facts are: there is an UN-resolution who calls for end of occupation and Israel decided to ignore it. These are the important facts. The unimportant part is what Israel said to justify its decision. This is an example for diplomatic speech, i.e. speech which hides a single message to transfer behind a legal discussion: "We won't fulfill it". Nobody really cares for which arguments are used, neither Israel nor the UN and the reader of wikipedia neither.

This is an example of arguments which should be IMHO not mentioned in Wikipedia because they are irrelevant and only bore the reader. Let's distinguish them from "real" arguments: such a real argument is for example the objections Israel raises in the debate about the right of the Palestinian refugees to return. A real argument is something the speaker firmly believes in and it constitutes a real problem for him. Let's clearly distinguish between "political excuses" (i.e. diplomatic speech) and real statements, political programs, strategies and whatsoever.

Next important thing is not to mix different levels of speakers. "Arabs say, Israelis say..." It may be hard for the individual to acknowledge, but in official political debates it is simply irrelevant, what the Palestinian baker and the Israeli IT-expert are saying. If there is a great mass running down the street screaming "down with Israel!" this is a political statement, but not on the same level as a Israeli government decision or the "official line" of the Fatah, and the latter are the stuff which count for politics (and also for our articles). This doesn't mean, however, that the masses have no influence in politics - it refers only to the depiction of debates in wikipedia where I often find a unseperated mix of all these different levels. These masses on the street may cause the PLO to adopt a certain strategy, the demonstration may illustrate the reaction to a certain event under the population - as such one can refer to them, but not "The Israeli government says this", and "the Arabs claim". In political science (and these articles should match the standard of political science) one distinguishes clearly between the differing opinions of the people (researched by statistics and interviews) and the statements of political leaders and organizations.

to be continued

back to Arab-Israeli conflict editing project


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Go professional

A Go professional is a professional player of the game of Go. The minimum standard to acquire a professional diploma through one of the major Go organisations is very high. The competition is tremendous, and prize incentives for champion players are very large. For example, the Honinbo Tournament has a grand prize of about $350,000.

Almost all professional players are from China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This is because until recently, only China (China Qiyuan), Japan (Nihon Ki-in, Kansai Ki-in), South Korea (Korea Baduk Association (Hanguk Gi-Won)), and Taiwan (Taiwan Chi Yuan Culture Foundation) had professional Go organizations. In 2012, the AGA Professional System was established in the United States. In 2014, the EGF professional system was established in Europe.

Professional rankings are separate from the amateur ratings (usually 30-kyu through 7-dan). Professional rankings are 1-dan through 9-dan (sometimes written 1p through 9p). In the past, a 1-dan professional was roughly equal to a (European) 7-dan amateur. However, since the competition to become a professional has increased since the late 1990s (particularly in China and Korea), it has become the case that new 1-dan professionals are much stronger than they usually were in the past.

There have also been professional Go players from the West competing in East Asian professional associations, specifically Romania, Austria, Germany, Russia, Hungary, Australia, Finland and the United States of America.

Reaching professional level
Professional dan rankings are normally awarded in Japan, China, South Korea or Taiwan, through one of the professional Go associations. The attainment of professional qualification differs in different countries:
 * In China, a few amateurs are given the 1p grade as probationers, on the basis of success in amateur tournaments.
 * In Japan, student professionals are called insei, and have to play in internal insei competitions to qualify; mostly they are adolescents, and must decide whether to continue based on their chances of a career in Go, or go to university. Insei rarely take part in amateur events, but some of the top amateurs are ex-insei.
 * In South Korea, four amateurs become professional every year, at the top of a ferocious league system of 80 aspiring pros. Once within the professional system, promotion is based on game results.
 * In Europe, the strongest players qualify or are invited to compete in a Qualification Tournament, with the top one or two players being awarded the rank of 1-dan professional. Seven such tournaments have taken place since 2014 with nine players having been granted professional status. Professional players can advance in rank by earning so-called "low dan points" and "high dan points" for beating other professionals in tournaments, competing in international tournaments and winning titles.

Most professional players begin studying Go seriously when they are children, commonly reaching professional status in their mid to late teens. Some rare students achieve professional status at a much earlier age, such as Sumire Nakamura and Cho Chikun.

In order to qualify as a first-dan professional (1p), one must have deep resources of game experience and study. In local positions, professionals are often on close ground with each other, understanding good shape, tesuji, life and death, fuseki and joseki patterns. However, in global positions they often differ in positional judgement—the global impact and interaction of josekis and differing importance of various parts of the board during the opening and middle game.

Discrepancies among professionals
The strength differences between professional levels is usually considered to be no more than 2–3 handicap stones. Therefore, the difference between professional dan levels corresponds to about one-third to one-fourth of a handicap stone.

Each country has different rules for promotion. Ranks may, therefore, differ somewhat from country to country.

Professionals may also differ in actual strength for a number of reasons, such as promotion not keeping up with actual gains in strength, or the fact that professional ranks (unlike kyu or amateur dan) may rise, but never fall (even if the player grows weaker). This has posed some problems, esp. with regards to international rank discernment. There are currently over one hundred people who have the rank of 9p (the highest professional rank), though many of them no longer play competitively. A further distinction is that some 9p players regularly hold titles, others won some titles, some entered the title leagues, and many 9p never had the fortune to achieve any of the above.

Traditionally it has been uncommon for a low professional dan to beat some of the highest pro dans. But since the late-1990s it has slowly become more common. This trend has been primarily credited to the result of increased competition to become a professional player in China and Korea. The result, that new 1-dan professionals are generally stronger than other 1 dans in the past.

In Japan, the Oteai system was reformed in 2004. The goal was to help alleviate some of the rank inflation that had crept in over the years. Today's Japanese system uses various benchmarks; for example, winning certain tournaments or a certain number of games, to be promoted by a rank. The Korean and Chinese systems have also been similarly changed in the past several years. These systems have increased the importance of international tournaments by incentivising rank promotion through international placement. Recent criticism has been given to this aspect, arguing that an individual may increase many professional ranks at once through the virtue of a single competition result (such as Piao Wenyao).

Pro and amateur dan
In theory, professional dans should beat all levels of amateur dans. In reality, the very top amateurs have proven very able. The conventional wisdom is that such players may achieve some of the insight of a pro, though perhaps not the detailed knowledge.

In China, Korea, and Japan, there are two distinct ranking sets, one for amateur players and one for professional players (who receive a fee for each game they play, bonuses for winning, and fees for other related activities such as teaching).

In the Japanese professional ranking system, distinction between ranks was traditionally considered to be roughly one third of a handicap stone (making the difference 3 pro dan equal to one amateur dan). The strength of new professionals (1-dan) was usually comparable to that of the highest ranked amateurs. Currently the professional ranks are assumed to be more bunched together, covering not much more than two amateur dans; so that pro 1 dans win some games against 9 dans. There are also a number of amateur players acknowledged as having pro 6 dan understanding of the game.

In South Korea, there are several amateur systems in use, with the recent introduction of official 7-, 6- and 5-dan amateur ranks, each of which is somewhat stronger than the corresponding European grade. A 7-dan amateur will have won three national events, and will be effectively of lower-ranked pro standard. The older gup system does not easily match others. In practice, in Korean clubs, grades may be worked out against the resident strongest amateur.

The Taiwan Chi Yuan Culture Foundation also employs a dan system similar to that in Japan. It ranks its professional players from beginner dan (初段) up to 9-dan, being the highest. However, the amateur ranking system is established by another organization which certifies amateur player through competitions, ranking player from beginner dan (初段) to 6-dan with 7-dan being honorary.

In Germany and the Netherlands a "classes"-system (German: "Klassen") was established by Go pioneer Bruno Rüger in 1920. It comprised a further subdivision into Kyu/Dan half-grades with classes 18 and 17 = amateur 1-dan with the 17 being on the stronger side. It was replaced by the Japanese amateur ranking system in the 1970s.

European Professional System
A European professional system was established by the European Go Federation in 2014, with sponsorship from "CEGO", a partnership of Chinese investors interesting in promoting the game of go in Europe. The self-proclaimed aims of the system are to "give the strongest players a chance to compete on the same level as the Asian pro players", "attract more media attention and therefore also attract more sponsors." Any player holding a European passport and having been a citizen of an EGF-member country for at least 10 years is eligible, providing they are not already a professional player belonging to another professional association.

The EGF also supports an "EGF Academy" that provides high-level training to the strongest young players in Europe. The Academy is a collaboration between the EGF, CEGO and the Ge Yuhong Go Academy in Beijing. Tuition is provided by both European and Asian professionals, and includes exchange programs allowing students to travel to China to study.

The first Pro Qualification Tournament was held in three European cities in the same year as the system's launch, and resulted in first Pavol Lisý of Slovakia and secondly Ali Jabarin of Israel emerging as the most successful players and thus the first two European professional players. A summary of all Qualification Tournaments is given below. Professional players in Europe receive various benefits. They gain automatic qualification to prestigious European tournaments, including the Grand Slam that has the largest prize pool in Europe (the overall champion won €10,000 in 2021). Furthermore, they are provided with opportunities to compete in Professional Go Leagues organised by the EGF since 2020, which are reserved only to professional players and also offer high prize pools. During major European tournaments, professional players are also paid to provide live commentary of games.

Professional Players of the EGF
Seven qualification tournaments have resulted in nine European players being awarded professional status by the EGF. Promotion details of each player are given below.

title: Go professional