Led by basketballer Yao Ming and hurdler Liu Xiang, China aim to challenge the US for first place in the medal standings at the home Olympics in Beijing next year.

China have come a long way since joining the Olympics as late as 1984 in Los Angeles, with their haul of 32 gold, 17 silver and 14 in Athens 2004 only just short of the dominant Americans, who garnered 35-39-29 medals.



The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the US have acknowledged China's rise to a global sports power, which the world's most populous nation wants to cap at the home Games August 8-24, 2008.



However, in order to do so, China must overcome doping concerns from abroad and immense expectations from its own public.

This issue has even reached Liu, the first male gold medallist for China in athletics when he won the 110 metres hurdles in Athens. His popularity soared even higher when he bettered the world record to clock 12.88 seconds in 2006.

'Next year, at the Beijing Olympic Games, I will have a lot of pressure because I will be the local favourite. All the Chinese people see me as the Athens Olympic champion so they think I will retain my title,' said Liu earlier this year.



'But all the athletes and coaches know how hard it is to become an Olympic champion. Just to be in the Beijing Olympic final will be ok for me. After that anything can happen in one race, gold, silver, bronze, anything is possible.'



Weightlifter Shi Zhiyong, also an Olympic champion from 2004, shares this view, with the mounting pressure all but cancelling out the home advantage in the areas of geography, climate and society.

'When I walk through the streets people come up to me, want a picture taken and say they hope that I get the gold. If this happens all the time I feel the pressure and can't concentrate on my training,' he admitted.

China has not given out an official medal target, but the Athens success, combined with the home advantage, almost automatically leads to the desire to leapfrog the US.



'China is going to be our most serious rival in 2008. We are complimentary of the Chinese system. We know how strong China is. It's going to be exceptionally strong, stronger every year,' said US Olympic Committee spokesman Robert Condron during the Athens Games.



IOC president Jacques Rogge lauded China's 'major progress' as part of 'an Asian awakening' in 2004 and predicted tough times for the US and others in the future.

The NBA centre Yao, Liu, Shi and Guo Jingjing, a 2004 gold medallist and four-time world champion in diving, stand out in a Chinese team that has long improved in all areas beyond its traditional strength in sports such as table tennis, shooting and diving.



Liu made history in Athens and China also got an Olympic gold there in tennis from the women's doubles pair of Li Ting and Sun Tiantian.



But Chinese sport was plagued by substance abuse in the 1990s and, while the number of positive tests has gone down, the country is still seen as the home of illegal doping laboratories. Its image was battered only last year by systematic doping in a sports school.

Rogge said that such labs exist in other countries as well and that China had also tackled the problem by increasing its number of doping tests.



'They conducted 9,000 tests in and out of competition last year. That is a large number, the largest number of tests in one country, but of course the population is large as well. Chinese sport is doing a good job,' Rogge told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily in May.



The IOC agreed last October to increase the number of drug tests for the Beijing Olympics as part of its 'zero tolerance approach to fighting doping'.



The IOC said it expected about 4,500 drug tests in Beijing, a 25 percent increase on Athens 2004.



World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chief Richard Pound, who according to Rogge will check the situation in November, was not as upbeat as the IOC boss.

Pound named the number of 2006 tests not satisfactory and warned that doping will be a key issue at the Beijing Games.



'The world won't measure the success of the Olympic Games in Beijing by whether the buses are on time, but by whether there is an effective national anti-doping programme in China,' Pound said.