Ryan Griffiths gave the home side an early lead in the Group E encounter before Joel Griffiths found an unmarked Du Wenhui to seal the points at the death after Jets striker Sasho Petrovski somehow contrived to miss from close range with three minutes to go.

Despite heading home without any points to show for their efforts, van Egmond was far from all doom and gloom.

"We can take a lot of heart out of this game," he said after the match."Overall we're happy with regards to the effort and performance and some football out there was good. I've learnt more about our football team as well, as I'm sure Beijing have learnt about theirs.

"The first 30 minutes I thought Beijing totally dominated the game. Their No.7 (Wang Changqing) was playing very well and causing us problems.

"Then we started to come back into the game for the final part of the first half and in the second half again we dominated the game.

 "In the end we tried to push on to get something out of the game, a schoolboy error and we conceded a second goal."

Newcastle's first home game in the group stage is against Ulsan next Tuesday.

Newcastle Jets: 1. Ante COVIC, 2. Tarek ELRICH, 3. Adam D'APUZZO, 4. Nikolai TOPOR-STANLEY, 5.  Ljubo MILICEVIC, 6. Ben KANTAROVSKI, 8. Matt THOMPSON (23. Sean ROONEY 70'), 9. Sasho PETROVSKI, 10. Donny DE GROOT (28. Brodie MOOY 89'), 17. Fabio VIGNAROLI (24. Kaz PATAFTA 86'), 25. Adam GRIFFITHS

Unused substitutes: 20. Ben KENNEDY (gk), 12. Jobe WHEELHOUSE, 14. Angelo COSTANZO

Yellow cards: Vignaroli 20', Milicevic 33', Topor-Stanley 54', Petrovski 88'