China advances to quarterfinals at table tennis worlds

Chinese men's and women's teams, both defending champions, advanced to the quarterfinal of the World Team Table Tennis Championships here side by side on Wednesday, defeating Austria and Chinese Taipei respectively.

Chinese women's team defeated Chinese Taipei for their fifth straight to win their group with an unbeaten record.

Li Xiaoxia, who has started to come into her own, took a comfortable victory over Liu Hsing-Yin from Chinese Taipei at 11-2, 11-6 and 11-8, and her teammates Ding Ning and Liu Shiwen also ousted their respective opponents Lin Chia-Hui and Cheng Hsien-Tzu easily both at 3-0.

Kong Linghui, head coach of the Chinese women's team, said that his players had their normal performance, and Li was active on Wednesday, which was a good phenomenon.

For the men's team, Ma Long ousted Gardos Robert from Austria 3-0, before teammates Zhang Jike beat Fegerl Stefan 3-1 and Xu Xin breezed over Chen Weixing 3-0.

Liu Guoliang, head coach of the Chinese team, said the Chinese players have played better and better during the past days of the group stage.

The 24 men's and women's teams were drawn into four groups of six teams apiece for the first stage of the Championships which ran from Feb. 28 to March 6.

After the round robin formation, four group winners, both men and women, advance to the quarterfinals directly, with the second and third placed teams of each group vying for the other quarter spots.

Chinese men's team is in group A with Austria, Chinese Taipei, Greece, the Czech Republic and DPRK, while Chinese women's team is pitted against Chinese Taipei, Romania, Hungary, Spain and hosts Malaysia. Endit