China set to win fight against doping

China is determined to win one of the most difficult battles facing teams preparing for the 2008 Olympics - sending a clean team to Beijing.

With about 200 days until the opening of the Games, a senior Chinese anti-doping official expressed his concern about the difficulties in keeping Chinese athletes from doping.

"It is an Olympic Games on home soil. It will be more difficult in terms of doping control," said Jiang Zhixue, head of the science and education department of the State General Administration of Sport (SGAS), which is in charge of doping control.

"If athletes go abroad for competition, language barriers and a strange environment will work against their desire to dope if there is any," Jiang explained. "But when they compete at home, there are so many things and people that can influence them, which is bad news from our point of view.

"It doesn't mean the familiar environment and their friends, relatives or coaches will give them any help. It is just that there is room for possible loopholes in terms of doping control.

"We are going to try our best. We are determined to catch those who dare to cheat and we won't hesitate to punish them. But first of all, we need to do everything to prevent it."

China has increased its number of tests, from 165 in 1989 to last year's 9,424, 74 percent of which were conducted out of competition.

In 2007, as the Olympics approaches, China further upped its effort to fight doping on the provincial and national level.

Early in the year, SGAS signed agreements with provincial sports bureaus holding them responsible if athletes from their provinces test positive in doping tests.

In May, the state council approved the creation of the China Anti-Doping Agency, an independent government anti-doping department that conducts tests and promotes research. It will carry out some 4,500 tests during the Beijing Olympics in its state-of-the-art lab.

In August, the central government called a meeting to combine the efforts of 11 major government departments to combat doping more effectively.

The coordination group, chaired by SGAS director Liu Peng, consists of experts and officials from the Ministries of Education, Public Security, Information Industry, Commerce, and Health, as well as China Customs, the State Industrial and Commercial Bureau, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the State Food and Drug Administration, the Legislative Office of the State Council, and the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Olympics.

"We are aware that effective doping control is not confined within the sports arena, but it needs the efforts of all government and social departments as well as cooperation from the international community," Duan Shijie, vice director of SGAS, said at November's World Conference on Doping in Sport in Madrid.

Jiang said education is another way to help prevent doping, adding that the group has held anti-doping exhibitions, given lectures and organized anti-doping exams for young athletes to teach them about the danger of doping.

"I always think education is a powerful weapon in our anti-doping fight," he said.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has also recognized China's efforts to fight doping. Dick Pound, the then WADA president who once accused China of inadequate doping tests, said at the world anti-doping conference that China had become a "vanguard" of anti-doping in the world.

Xinhua

(China Daily 12/27/2007 page22)