All but men's class 3 teams of China progressed to the next round at the Beijing Paralympics table tennis tournament on Sunday.

In the most eye-catching match during the afternoon session, China edged Germans 3-2 in men's class 6-8.

The Paralympics team event allows two players to form a side to play on a best-of-five format, with each playing three matches - two singles and one doubles. Germany challenged with Jochen Wollmert and Adniel Arnold.

In the first match, Chinese Ye Chaoqun from class 7 downed Arnold in class 6 easily with 11-7, 11-6 and 11-5, but Wollmert, the gold medalist in men's class 7, leveled the scoreboard after taking over the winner of men's class 8, Chen Gang.

In the doubles match, Ye and Chen rallied from 2-0 down, and edged Wollmert and Arnold 3-2 after five sets, when Chen Gang made nearly five dive saves to get the ball back on the table.

Wollmert then repeated his gold medal match in the individual event, beating Chinese Ye Chaoqun again 3-2, with close set scores of 11-4, 4-11, 9-11, 14-12 and 11-9.

In the last deciding match, Germany almost made a breakthrough when Arnold led Chen 8-4 in the final set, but Chen found his game back after a short adjust of his artificial leg, edging his opponent 11-9 in the last minute.

"My partners give everything. It is a fantastic match today," German team member, Rainer Schmidt, said after the match. "They (Chinese) have to give all, and that makes us proud."

Chen Gang and his teammates didn't give any chance to their semifinal opponent, beating Israel with straight 3-0 in the evening. They will thus take on Slovakia in the finals on Tuesday.

In the women's class 4-5, all the four players, Ren Guixiang, Gu Gai, Zhou Ying and Zhang Bian, took part in the match, and downed Sweden with indisputable 3-0. Chinese will thus take on Jordan in the semifinals on Monday.

Chinese men's class 4-5 team made their way to the finals after beating Chinese Taipei 3-0 in the morning and Norway 3-1 in the evening, and will meet South Korea in the final on Tuesday.

Women's class 6-10 saw no surprises, as China and Partyka-led Poland went into the finals. Partyka is the only player in this table tennis tournament that participated in both Olympics and Paralympics.

She won the individual event gold medal on Wednesday in women's class 10.

In women's class 1-3, the individual event gold medalists from class 3 and 2, Li Qian and Liu Jing, upset French team 3-1, whilst Ma Lin, Ge Yang and Lu Xiaolei from men's class 10 defeated Sweden 3-0 in the morning.

Yet Chinese suffered one loss in men's class 3 on Sunday's competition. Feng Panfeng and Zhao Ping duo, however, was upset by Brazilians 3-2.

The men's team events include five classes, combining classes 1-2, 4-5, 6-8 and 9-10 along with class 3, while women's events putting together classes 1-3, 4-5 and 6-10.

The table tennis tournament team events are scheduled from Sept. 13 to 16. In the earlier individual events, team of China won a total of eight gold medals out of 16.

(Xinhua News Agency September 16, 2008)