China's Women Edge Puerto Rico 75-72 to Reach the World Cup Quarter-Finals

China's women's basketball team survived its sternest test of the tournament on Wednesday, edging Puerto Rico 75-72 in Berlin to reach the quarter-finals of the FIBA Women's World Cup — and securing its place as the only Asian team left in the draw. France awaits in Thursday's quarter-final.

It was, by the account of everyone who watched, anything but comfortable. "A hard-fought win," as one basketball commentator put it in a widely shared post. Han Xu carried the inside load with 21 points and 11 rebounds; Yang Shuyu ran the floor and the offence with 15 points and 11 assists, opening the game with a three on China's first possession. And Zhang Ziyu added 13 points — the number that carries the most curiosity for anyone new to this team.

Zhang is the 2.26-metre (7-foot-4) rising star from Shandong who made the squad as a teenager and has become the story of China's tournament whatever the result. She was named to the 12-player roster alongside established names — Han Xu, Wang Siyu, Yang Shuyu — after a training list that signalled a deliberate passing of the torch under coach Gong Luming, with veterans running alongside a new generation. Her presence at the World Cup is the clearest sign yet of how China plans to rebuild around the most physically unusual player the women's game here has produced.

The win was also carved out of disruption. Li Yueru, the centre who anchors the frontcourt alongside Han, missed the tournament entirely after her passport was lost in the post while being mailed to her in the United States; the federation's announcement, made as the roster was finalised, became its own small saga on Chinese social media. Her absence has pushed Han Xu and Yang Shuyu into carrying roles — Wednesday's twin double-doubles were the latest evidence of how heavily the team leans on them, as one courtside commentator noted: "one inside, one outside, our twin engines."

The win registered well beyond the sports pages: The Paper led its feed with the result, and by evening the game was among Zhihu's most-followed questions of the day, with fans parsing the box score — Han Xu's 21 and 11, Yang Shuyu's 15 and 11, Zhang Ziyu's 13 — and what a quarter-final against France might hold.

France, beaten finalists in recent international cycles and a roster China knows well from Olympic and World Cup draws, will start favourite. The deeper strain is the calendar: the World Cup in Berlin ends on September 13, and China's Asian Games campaign in Nagoya opens six days later, a turnaround the team's own staff have flagged as the toughest conditioning test of the year. The win over Puerto Rico bought the programme a quarter-final and, perhaps, a measuring stick for exactly how far this rebuilding squad has travelled.