(BEIJING, August 19) -- The Table Tennis Women's Singles competition advanced to the third round Wednesday as the top-ranked players started their quest for medals. All 16 winners of Wednesday's round compete for, or were born, in Asian countries, including competitors that are representing European and American countries in this summer's Games.

　　The Men's Singles tournament also continues at the Peking University Gymnasium, finishing their second round Wednesday.

　　In the Women's Singles third round, all three Chinese players, World No.1 Zhang Yining, No. 2 Guo Yue and Grand Slam winner Wang Nan, finished their matches within half an hour to qualify for the next round. Zhang took only 25 minutes to claim victory over her 34th-ranked opponent Viktoria Pavlovich of Belarus with four straight games. Guo overpowered Lau Sui Fei of Hong Kong China with another four straight games in 24 minutes. And Wang took an even shorter time of 23 minutes to beat Georgina Pota of Hungary.

　　World No.50 Wu Xue of the Dominican Republic, who originates from China, created the biggest upset of the day when she beat No. 7 Wang Yuegu of Singapore. The other two Singaporean players, World No. 6 Li Jiawei and No. 9 Feng Tianwei succeeded into the fourth round. Republic of Korea's two defensive players, Kim Kyung-ah and Park Mi-young also entered the fourth round.

　　Twelfth-ranked Fukuhara Ai is the only Japanese player who will enter Thursday's round. Tie Yana and Lin Ling of Hong Kong China made it to Thursday, too.

　　The other five fourth-round qualifiers, Li Jie and Li Jiao of the Netherlands, Wang Chen and Gao Jun of the United States and Li Qiangbing of Australia were all born in China but now represent other countries.

　　On the Men's side, eyes were on the three six-time Olympians, Zoran Primorac of Croatia, Jorgen Persson of Sweden and Jean-Michel Saive of Belgium. Primorac beat Robert Gardos of Austria who has been in excellent form so far 4-2. Jorgen Persson overcame Aleksandar Karakasevic of Serbia with the same score. Yet Saive lost to Nigeria's Segun Toriola 2-4. Christian Suss of Germany, Chen Weixing of Austria, Yoon Jae-young of the Republic of Korea, Mizutani Jun of Japan along with 10 other players entered the third round to be held Thursday.