Asian champion China and Japan both secured berths in the quarter-finals of the Doha Asian Games men's basketball tournament with respective victories here on Wednesday.

NBA prospect Yi Jianlian had 28 points and nine rebounds in less than 23 minutes to lift China over Chinese Taipei 101-65.

With its third straight win, China iced a top four finish from its round-robin group with two games to play.

Chinese Taipei fought bravely in the first quarter, jumping to a 12-6 lead and held it to 13-11. China overtook the lead 24-23 at the end of the quarter before pulling away with a 19-0 run early in the second quarter to go up 45-25.

"Our opponents are serious enough. They play good offense one- on-one, and they are really good at transition. If they catch their rhythm, they can hurt us, and that's what happened at the beginning of this game," said China head coach Jonas Kazlauskas.

"Then we started to play better defense and started to change system in defense, and we came back and became more confident."

Yi, the 2.12-meter power forward who had announced for the next year's NBA draft, shot 9-for-10 from the field in 16 minutes to boost China to a 52-33 lead at the half time. He finished 13-for- 14 from the field and 4-for-4 from the line.

"For the second game he played well as how we needed, and the same compliments for the team that used him well too."

China improved to 80-46 at the end of the third quarter before Kazlauskas rested his starters.

Zhu Fangyu and Hu Xuefeng added 18 and 16 points respectively for China while former NBA cager Wang Zhizhi only managed 13 points on 6-for-13 shooting.

Japan also claimed its third win in a row by defeating Uzbekistan 75-56 to share a 3-0 record with China in Group B.

As China and Japan march on, Lebanon suffered its second straight defeat as it lost to Kazakhstan 80-75.

Lebanon stayed within 70-69 late in the hotly contested game, but Kazakhstan staged a 9-3 run to improve it to 79-72 with 36.2 seconds to go.

Rony Fahed of Lebanon nailed a big three-pointer to cut it to 79-75, only to see Yevgeniy Issakov make a free throw with 22.8 seconds remaining to make it 80-75.

Anton Ponomarev had 27 points and 16 rebounds to lead Kazakhstan, who improved to a 2-1 record after three games.

Fadi El Khatib, who notched game-high 34 points and pulled down 13 rebounds in 40 minutes for Lebanon, missed an easy shot just under the basket before receiving an offense foul call in the dying seconds.

"We played no defense," said Joseph Vogel, who contributed 15 points and 11 rebounds for Lebanon.

"We started our preparation only five days before the tournament, we can't beat teams that have prepared for the whole summer," he added.