The hard-hitting baseliners remained even throughout much of the match, delighting the crowd with long rallies and hitting amazing angles with their ground strokes.
The 23-year-old Nadal got the upper hand by taking the first set, but the Cypriot, who won the China Open in 2006, bounced right back to take the second.
At 4-4 in the third set, the left-handed Spaniard pounced, breaking Baghdatis and then serving out the match, exulting when the Cypriot's final stroke landed in the net.
Roddick, the third seed here, stumbled out in straight sets to Polish qualifier Lukasz Kubot, 6-2, 6-4, while China's Peng Shuai defeated the eighth seed Jankovic, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2.
"I didn't play well," Roddick told reporters after the match.
"I don't know if I was super-prepared and it showed. I was trying stuff out there and nothing seemed to be working too well."
Jankovic said an arm injury that forced her to retire from the Pan Pacific Open final in Tokyo against Sharapova at the weekend was still troubling her.
"It was very difficult and I couldn't play my best tennis," she said.
Sharapova, a three-time Grand Slam winner, fired 13 aces in her gutsy three-set come-from-behind win over ninth seed Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 7-5.
"I felt like my level dropped a little bit (in the third set)," Sharapova told reporters, but added: "I certainly felt like I stepped it up when I needed to."
In other women's matches, fourth seed Dementieva, fellow Russian seventh seed Vera Zvonareva, 10th seed Flavia Pennetta of Italy and 14th seed Marion Bartoli of France all moved into the round of 16.
In the men's draw, fourth seed Nikolay Davydenko, fifth seed Fernando Verdasco, seventh seed Fernando Gonzalez and Safin, the 2004 China Open champion, all won their opening matches.
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