Zhuang Zedong, three-time world men's singles table tennis champion and the man credited with starting ping-pong diplomacy, is in a serious condition with complication from cancer, according to multiple reports.

A photo published on his Sina Weibo shows the 72-year-old at a Beijing hospital on Sunday, with his wife at his bedside.

Zhuang Zedong receives an intravenous infusion at a Beijing hospital on Sunday. [Photo/Tang Shizeng]

"Zhuang's condition grew worse suddenly in July. The hospitals treating him in Beijing and Shanghai have all turned down his hospitalization request.

Zhuang has developed complications from liver failure, according to a Xinhua reporter.

The table tennis champion, who won a horde of events in the 1960s, is famed for his chance meeting with a US table tennis player, Glenn Cowan, during the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in 1971, later referred to as ping-pong diplomacy.

The term ping-pong diplomacy describes exchanges in the early 1970s of table tennis players between the United States and China in hope of normalizing the countries' strained relations at that time.

He married his second wife, Chinese-born Japanese Sasaki Atsuko, in 1985.

In August 2008, Zhuang was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer, with complications in his liver and lungs.