BEIJING, December 13, 2013 (AFP) - Scott Laycock and Michael Long put the Asian team on top with a 7 and 6 win over Wu Ashun and Wu Kangchun, before Zhang Lianwei and Huang Wenyi levelled it up 2 and 1 against Choo Tze-huang and Eric Mina.
Rory Hie and Thaworn Wiratchant then traded birdies with Yang Guanming and Yan Bin before clinching the match one up on day one.
Korean pair Kim Dae-sub and Choi Ho-sung beat Li Chao and Huang Mingjie 4 and 2, and Japan's Masamichi Uehira and Kazuhiro Yamashita won 4 and 3 against Wang Mingao and Li Xinyang.
Su Dong and amateur Dou Zecheng, 16, were denied victory by an outrageous, 60-foot birdie putt on the 18th by Matthew Griffin to halve the match with his partner Gareth Paddison.
"It's not over by a long way," Laycock said. "With matchplay anything can happen and the scores don't really reflect how hard the Chinese players pushed us."
The three-day matchplay event, the final tournament on this year's OneAsia tour, is being played at CTS Tycoon Club in Shenzhen, southern China.