China reached the women's basketball semifinals on Tuesday after a victory over Belarus 77-62 in the quarterfinal round for the first time in 16 years at the Olympics.
China, who led throughout the match by as much as 22 points midway through the third quarter, will meet Australia in Friday's semifinals.
The defending champions United States and Russia also entered the semifinals after beating the Czech Republic and Spain respectively on Tuesday.
Miao Lijie scored a game-high 28 points for China, who took silver at the Barcelona Olympics 16 years ago but never reached the last four since then.
"We have not played like this for a long time," Miao told the news conference. "We played with a very good teamwork and did all together just like one person. I am satisfied with what we played and will try our best in the semifinals no matter whoever we will meet."
China led 38-25 at halftime and expanded it to 54-32 with a 16-7 spurt with 4:30 minutes left in the third quarter. Belarus cut the gap to 47-56 before China regained the game with a 15-4 run to seal the win.
Australia crushed the Czech 79-46 in another quarterfinal game for its fourth consecutive semifinals.
"I know they (China) are planning to win the semifinal," said Belinda Snell, who had 15 points and 9 rebounds for Austrlia.
"They got an Australian coach and an Australian assistant coach, who are quite familiar with us. We will take it seriously and come out strong."
The Australians built a 38-17 halftime lead and expanded the advantage to 41 points, 71-30, on Enin Phillips' 3-pointers with 7:37 minutes to play in the fourth quarter en route to the easy victory.
Lauren Jackson contributed a game-high 17 points and 12 rebounds for the Australians, who lost their star Penny Taylor only one minute into the third period for a right ankle injury.
The United States trounced South Korea 104-60 to play against Russia, who came from a 18 points back to beat Spain 84-65 later Tuesday.
The Americans didn't control the game until they broke the open with a 7-2 run and finished the first quarter with a narrow lead 25- 21 and furthered the lead as many as 46 points, 104-58, before sealing the lopsided victory.
The last quarterfinal match was a rematch of the 2007 European Championships final between Russia and Spain and the most thrilling one among the Tuesday's quarterfinals.
Spain jumped out to a 21-10 first period lead and expanded to an 18 points advantage 28-10. Russia, however, fought back and cut the margin to 30-34 with an 18-4 spurt with 3:30 minute left in the second quarter.
It was not enough for the Russians who also made a 9-1 run to surpass over Spain 51-49 for the first time lead and finished the third quarter with a 56-55 lead.
The European champions continued to their eruption with an unbelievable 12-1 opener in the fourth quarter for a 68-56 lead and were never under the threat.
Russia outshot Spain 62 percent in long range from 8-of-13 to 38 percent from 6-of16 and outrebounded them 40-29.
(Xinhua News Agency August 20, 2008)