China hammered Saudi Arabia 25-20, 25-21, 25-15 on Wednesday at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games men's volleyball tournament.

With the victory, China will clash with India in the fifth-place play-off on Friday. India defeated Qatar in straight sets earlier on Wednesday with a 25-23, 25-16, 25-17 victory.

"India is a strong team, and we have to play our best game to defeat them," said Zhou Jian'an, head coach of China, "This will be a hard game, our players are in low morale after we lost the quarterfinal against Japan."

Jumping to an 8-3 lead at the first technical time-out, China staged a 4-0 run on back of high quality blocking before clinching the lopsided opener 25-20.

Saudi Arabia, bronze medallist of the Doha Asian Games four years ago, finally got its offense at the start of the second set and managed to tie at 9-all. However, China ran off a 6-1 run thereafter for a comfortable 15-10 cushion and went on to take the victory 25-21.

In third set, Saudi Arabia fought hard to build a 6-all tie, but only saw China answer with a 4-0 run to seal the victory at 25-15.

Chen Ping led the Chinese team with 19 points, including 14 kills and four blocks. Captain Shen Qiong, who enlisted on the starting list for the first time at Asiad, added 11.

Saudi Arabia's top scorer Masfr Albeshy contributed 12 points, but suffered from a knee-injury, Albeshy could not stop China's speedy attackings on court.

"Albeshy has an injury on his knee, I think our problems were from our heads. Our players were playing on court without their brains, everything was coming from this," said Kalid Abdlurhman Alammar, head coach of Saudi Arabia.

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