A 16-year-old middle school student grabbed the championship title for Team China at the eighth World Sudoku Championship on Tuesday in Beijing.

It is a breakthrough for the Chinese team, and China is expected to one day become a major force in sudoku competition, said Chen Cen, chief organizer and referee of the championship.

"The Chinese national sudoku team started competing in the championship in 2007 and has made impressive progress," she said. "The young players are especially promising and we are very confident about the future of sudoku in China."

The event attracted about 300 players from 35 countries and regions.

Sudoku is a game that requires each horizontal and vertical line in a square grid to contain every number from one to nine, with no duplicates.

The winner, Jin Ce, said taking the title is something he had never anticipated.

"This was the second time I had competed in a world-class sudoku game, after last year in Croatia, where I ranked 10th," he said.

"I thought I would rank the same and make it to the top ten. I never expected to win the world champion title - sudoku is just a hobby to me."

Jin said he was glad to see that more people from around the world are taking up sudoku.

Kota Morinishi, 24, a Japanese graduate student who won the championship last year, came second.

Chen said the championship will boost the game's popularity in China.

"The game didn't come to China until about six years ago, even though it had been a popular pastime in developed countries for a long time," she said.

"People in Europe and Japan have been playing sudoku for more than 20 years."

But China has seen a significant rise in interest in the game in recent years, especially among teenagers, she said.

More than 50 schools in Beijing are introducing sudoku classes, Chen said, and the Beijing Sudoku Union has set up a number of competitions in primary schools and colleges to promote the game.

"We have also discovered a lot of young talent in these competitions, all of whom could likely be part of the national team in the future," she said.

The Chinese team has a large number of young players who all gave impressive performances at the National Sudoku Championship in August.

The world championship this year for the first time included categories for individuals, teams, minors and competitors aged 50 and above, to encourage people of all ages to enter the contest, the organizing committee said.

China ranked third in Croatia last year, after Japan and the Czech Republic.