Axel Witsel scored five minutes from time to salvage a 1-1 draw for Tianjin Quanjian against 10-man Shanghai Shenhua on Saturday evening, but Alexandre Pato's poor start to life in the Chinese Super League continued as the Brazilian missed a penalty that would have secured all three points for Fabio Cannavaro's side.
Giovanni Moreno gave Gus Poyet's side the lead with 15 minutes to go despite Shanghai playing almost three quarters of the game a man down following Qin Sheng's sending off in the 24th minute, only for Belgium international Witsel to level in the 85th minute.
Tianjin were handed the opportunity to claim all three points three minutes later when Wang Lin handled the ball in the box, but Pato's miss from the spot came a week after a disappointing performance against Guangzhou R&F in his Chinese Super League debut.
The result moves Shenhua on to four points, two adrift of leaders Shanghai SIPG and Shandong Luneng.
Manuel Pellegrini's Hebei China Fortune collected a second draw in a row as their game with Chongqing Lifan finished 1-1.
"Overall we played how we wanted and improved significantly from the first game," said former Manchester City manager Pellegrini, who saw Che Shiwei's opener cancelled out by Alan Kardec's 32nd-minute equaliser.
"We tried very hard to push the ball into their half and had a lot of desire to win the game. If this is our fighting spirit and performance in away games, our home games will be definitely better. We had three more chances but unfortunately we missed them.
"But I'm very satisfied with my team today and quite confident for the upcoming games."
Beijing Guoan picked up their first point of the season after last week's opening loss against Guangzhou Evergrande with a 1-1 draw against Guizhou Zhicheng.
Hong Kong international Festus Baise gave Chongqing the lead midway through the first half before Burak Yilmaz claimed his second goal in two games in the 43rd minute to secure Beijing a point.
"Today we could have created more opportunities but when our opponent scored first we struggled to come back," Beijing coach Jose Gonzalez said. "They were the better side and we spent too much time settling into the game. I'm not happy as head coach. We could have done better."