World table tennis governing body ITTF announced the seedings for the Olympic Games team events, which are introduced for the first time in the Olympic history.

Both the Chinese men's and women's teams have been seeded top in the 16-team events respectively, according to the news release mailed to Xinhua by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) reaching?to?Beijing?on Friday.

Germany, South Korea and Hong Kong are among the top four in the men's team seedings, while Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea women's teams have been placed as the second to fourth seeds. Top four seeded teams will not play games between each others until the semifinals.

The team events play a best-of-five matches in each contest with each match playing the best-of-five games. A contest consists of two singles matches followed by a doubles match, followed, if necessary, by one or two singles matches, until a team wins three matches.

A special team ranking list, taking into consideration only the players qualified from each team, was produced on the basis of the ITTF July 2008 world rankings to establish the seeds for the round robin stage.

The ITTF decided to include the men's and women's team events instead of the doubles in the Olympic competitive format four years ago, right after the Athens Olympic table tennis events.

Following the specific rules for the Olympic Games table tennis competitions, a team consists of three players and each team can nominate one alternate player that can replace another one in case of injury or sickness.

The table tennis competitions of the Beijing Olympics is to start on August 13, five days after the Games' opening ceremony, and will produce four gold medals through to August 23.

Draws for men's and women's team events round robin stage will be made on next Thursday before the singles draws on August 11.

Following are the seedings of the Olympic table tennis team events:

Men's Team

1. China

2. Germany

3. South Korea

4. Hong Kong

5. Japan

6. Chinese Taipei

7. Singapore

8. Austria

9. Croatia

10. Greece

11. Sweden

12. Russia

13. Brazil

14. Nigeria

15. Canada

16. Australia

Women's team

1. China

2. Singapore

3. Hong Kong

4. South Korea

5. Japan

6. Germany

7. Netherlands

8. Austria

9. United States

10. Croatia

11. Spain

12. Poland

13. Romania

14. Australia

15. Dominican Republic

16. Nigeria

(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2008)