China first competed at the 1958 World Championships. They stopped competing after the 1962 World Championships due to the International Gymnastics Federation accepting Taiwan as a member nation. They returned in 1979 where Ma Yanhong won China's first gold medal. The Chinese women originally won the bronze medal in the team event at the 1999 World Championships; however their medal was stripped in 2010 after it was discovered that Dong Fangxiao's age was falsified at the time of the competition.