As the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships is scheduled to kick off in Beijing on Thursday, Chinese figure skaters are treating the annual tournament as a final competitive test before the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics in February.

This year, the Four Continents event, one of the International Skating Union's flagship annual competitions for non-European skaters, brings together more than 100 skaters from 17 countries and regions at the National Indoor Stadium in Beijing. 

For the Chinese team, the Four Continents Championships are both a competitive goal and a rehearsal for the pressures of Olympic skating. 

In the men's singles, Jin Boyang, Chen Yudong and Peng Zhiming carry China's hopes. 

Jin, now 28, a veteran of the Pyeongchang 2018 and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, is China's lone qualified men's singles representative for Milan and has been the class standard of the domestic field in Olympic qualification. 

He has polished his programs this season and is aiming to translate his stability into strong performances on home ice.

The women's singles lineup features An Xiangyi, Zhang Ruiyang and Zhu Yi. 

Zhang, 18, made a breakthrough in September when she earned a valuable Olympic quota spot for China by finishing fifth at the ISU Olympic qualification competition in Beijing. She then secured her Olympic berth by prevailing in domestic selection events.

"I hope this competition can show all the results of my training," Zhang told reporters on Wednesday after finishing a training session. 

She added that since the previous performance in the same arena in September, when she had jump setbacks, she has trained more thoroughly this time. 

"I hope this time I can perform better," she insisted.

In an Olympic year, the Four Continents Championships serves not only as a standalone tournament, but also as a critical final tune-up for athletes on the road to Italy. 

An acknowledges the pressure on her - this will be her first Olympics representing China - as she is the only individual skater in the women's race. 

"Now I can feel the pressure on me," said An, who is returning from an injury that forced her out of the China Cup.

"I mainly want to try my best," she said, adding that the unpredictability of competition makes control over every variable impossible.

In pair skating, Beijing 2022 Olympic champions Sui Wenjing and Han Cong return to competition alongside first-time Four Continents participants Zhang Jiaxuan and Huang Yihang. 

Sui and Han's presence, as six-time Four Continents champions, adds star power and leadership to the Chinese squad, while Zhang and Huang have built momentum through personal best results on the Grands Prix.

In ice dance, three Chinese duos, Wang Shiyue/Liu Xinyu, Ren Junfei/Xing Jianing and Xiao Zixi/He Linghao, will compete. 

Wang and Liu, veterans who delivered China's best Olympic ice dance result before stepping away from elite competition, staged a comeback last season and secured an Olympic berth at the September qualification event. 

"We feel more composed and more confident this time than we were in September [during the Olympic qualifications]. Now our understanding of the programs, including the performance style, feels much deeper, and overall we're skating with more freedom," Wang told reporters on Wednesday. 

"We're treating this competition as a test before the Olympics, hoping to fix the issues that were exposed in previous competitions and make the programs better."

This week's event marks the tournament's return to the Chinese capital for the first time since 2003.