China narrowly missed the chance to win its maiden Pool C championship after a 3-2 loss to Hungary at the World Ice Hockey Pool C Championships in Beijing Saturday night.

Hungary jumped to a 2-0 lead in the opening period through Palkovics Krisztian and Orso Laszlo.

China, inspired by a host crowd of about 12,000, made up the deficit as Zhang Lei scored a power-play goal at 23:46 and Pan Zhiqiang added another at 31:16.

However, Szelig Viktor beat Chinese goalie Liu Xue with a slap shot 1:25 after Pan's goal to make Hungary lead 3-2 at the end of the second period.

The Chinese tried all out to find an equalizer in the third but failed to find the net with 15 shots.

``We did well in the second and third periods," said Chinese head coach Wang Jingang. "We've got a chance to win, but we did not grasp it."

China finished its top-three round-robin matches with two points from a win and a loss. Hungary had two points with a match left against Croatia, in which they have a big chance to win.

In the day's other match, Lithunia downed South Korea 8-3 in a match to decide the fourth to sixth places and Spain drew with Yugoslavia 1-1 in a seventh-to-ninth play-off.