BIRMINGHAM, March 7: Denmark’s Tine Rasmussen continued the decimation of China in the women’s singles by knocking out the No.4 seed Zhu Lin in the second round at the All-England Championships on Thursday.

Following the shock exit of the top two seeds — defending champion Xie Xingfang, the winner for the last three years, and Olympic Champion Zhang Ning — in round one, Rasmussen claimed world No.5 Zhu’s scalp with a comfortable 21-14, 21-15 victory.

It took her through to an all-European quarter-final against last year’s runner-up Pi Hongyan. The French player, who is the No.6 seed, had earlier defeated Canada’s Anna Rice 21-7, 22-20.

Wang Chen, from Hong Kong, claimed her place in the quarter-finals with a 21-17, 14-21, 21-18 win after a close deciding game with Shao-Cheh Cheng, from Chinese Taipei.

Cheng led 16-15 in the decider, but Wang hit back to win four points in a row and avoid joining a list of seeded casualties in the women’s singles.

Yao Lie, who had knocked out Zhang Ning, couldn’t follow-up and disappointingly went out in straight games to Japan’s Yu Hirayama.

Yao had been in great form against the No.2 seed but struggled against the unseeded Hirayama and lost 17-21, 17-21 in just 34 minutes.

There was another huge blow for China in the men’s doubles with top seeds and last year’s runners-up, Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng, going out 22-24, 21-7, 18-21 to Hong Kong’s Albertus Susanto Njoto and Yohan Hadkusumo Wirayama.

Results (prefix number denotes seeding):

Men’s singles: