The world's dominant nation did not send their strongest team to this week's event at the ÖVB-Arena but will be disappointed nonetheless that their two remaining players each lost in today's quarter-finals.

It left players from Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Chinese Taipei standing heading into tomorrow's finale.

Wu Yang was ousted 4-2 by Japan's second seed Kasumi Ishikawa while Sun Yingsha lost by the same margin to Cheng I-ching of Chinese Taipei.

Singapore's top seed Feng Tianwei cruised through 4-0 against Jeon Jihee of South Korea elsewhere.

She will now face Suh Hyo-won, who edged an all South Korean clash with Yang Hae-un 4-3.

It continued a superb tournament for Suh after she knocked-out Japan's Asian champion Miu Hirano yesterday.

China's Ma Long won a battle of the Olympic medallists in the men's singles last-16 after beating Japan's Jun Mizutani 4-0.

He then won 4-1 against home favourite Timo Boll in the quarter-final.

The scoreline did not reflect the closeness of the match as the reigning world and Olympic champion came from 10-5 down in the final set to secure the win.

Patrick Franziska, who beat German top seed Dmitrij Ovtcharov yesterday, kept the home flag flying by overcoming Marcos Freitas of Portugal 4-2 and then Kristian Karlsson of Sweden 4-1 today.

He will next face China's Xu Xin, a 4-2 quarter-final winner against Simon Gauzy of France.

Wong Chun Ting of Hong Kong completed the semi-final line-up with a 4-1 success against Sweden's Mattias Karlsson, who had earlier surprised Japan's fourth seed Koki Niwa 4-1.