Can chess engines play xiangqi?
These answers restate the rules implemented by our open-source engine, which follows the WXF laws for movement, checkmate and both repetition rulings: a side that forces a repetition by perpetual check or perpetual chase loses rather than drawing. The chase half has not been validated against the official casebook. Where an answer refers to a specific position, that position lives on the linked reference page, where the build verifies it before publishing.
Direct answer
Not directly. A chess engine encodes chess rules, a 64-square board and a chess-specific evaluation. Xiangqi needs its own engine — different board, different movement, screen logic for the cannon, and repetition rules that have no chess analogue. The search techniques transfer; the program does not.
What is shared
Alpha-beta search, transposition tables, iterative deepening, move ordering, and increasingly neural evaluation. A strong engine programmer moves between the games easily; the code does not.
What is genuinely harder in xiangqi
The repetition rules. Perpetual check and perpetual chase are adjudicated rather than drawn, and correctly deciding who must vary requires understanding what each side is threatening — not just whether a position repeated. It is why many online implementations simplify it.
Related questions
Are xiangqi engines as strong as chess engines?
Relative to human players, yes — well beyond the best humans for years.
Is xiangqi solved?
No, and it will not be. Only small endgame tablebases are complete.
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