Shanghai SIPG brushed off the suspension-enforced absence of Brazilian striker Oscar on Sunday evening to hand Henan Jianye a 4-1 thrashing in the Chinese Super League to keep pace with leaders Guangzhou Evergrande.
The gap between the teams remains at four points after Luiz Felipe Scolari's defending champions claimed a 2-0 win over third-placed Hebei CFFC.
Oscar was missing for SIPG as he served the first of his eight game ban on Sunday for his involvement in a brawl that marred the Shanghai club's 1-1 draw with Guangzhou R&F last weekend.
An own goal from Edigeison Gomes gave SIPG the lead in the 22nd minute before second half strikes from Odil Ahmedov, Elkeson and Wu Lei put Andre Villas-Boas' side in charge. Javier Patino claimed a late consolation for the visitors.
"It was a very entertaining game today," said Villas-Boas, whose only public utterance regarding Oscar's ban came via a brief Instagram post at the end of the week. "I am very happy with the players' performances. We deserved the win.
"Yu Hai played well as he just came back from injury. This was his second 45 minutes, he also another half in the FA Cup and it is important that we have him back. We are looking forward to seeing him improve."
SIPG's win moves Villas-Boas' team onto 33 points, opening up a five-point gap to Hebei CFFC after Manuel Pellegrini's side suffered a 2-0 loss against Evergrande, the six-time champions.
Scolari's team maintained their four-point lead over SIPG with a comfortable win in front of their own fans with two goals in six second half minutes.
Ricardo Goulart put Guangzhou in front in the 47th minute before Alan Carvalho doubled his side's lead in the 53rd minute and Evergrande took all three points despite Ren Hang's red card for a second bookable offence two minutes from time.