BEIJING, Aug 4 (AFP) - As athletes from the United States and Australia fight drug allegations ahead of the Athens Olympics, China is quietly cleaning up its act after years of doping shame.
With a chequered history of drugs in sport, the powerhouse nation will be watched closely in Greece to see how far it has come since decisions were made by sports highest authorities to get clean with an eye on Beijing in 2008.
"We will try to make sure that no Chinese athlete tests positive at the Games," said Li Furong, deputy director of the State General Administration of Sport.
"Chinese athletes have had no positive test at major multi-sport international games since the Sydney Olympics. We would also like to keep it clean at the Athens Games."
While Li's comments are correct, they don't reflect the true picture as China still has cheats in its ranks. It is just that they've been exposed at lower profile or single sport events rather than the multi-sport games Li refers to.
Perhaps the most recent high profile case was the positive test returned by champion weightlifter Shang Shichun at the world championships in Vancouver last year. She was stripped of her three gold medals.
Nevertheless, the statistics show that China is getting on top of the problem.
Last year 18 positive doping cases in 10 sports were registered, according to the Chinese Olympic Committee Anti-doping Commission.
Of the 18, five were in athletics and one in swimming and stiff bans of up to three years were handed out.
This compares to 34 in 2002 and is way better than its drug-fuelled heyday in the 1990s when China gained a reputation as one of the worst drug cheating nations in world sport.
That shame, and the winning of the Olympics in 2008, prompted China to face the problem.
It dropped 27 athletes from its Sydney Olympics team and has been undertaking a rigorous anti-doping campaign ever since.
So far this year, it has conducted 1,366 urine tests and 79 blood tests with only four positives, according to the most recent data from early June.
"To keep a clean record in Athens is one of the most important tasks of the year for us," Shi Kangcheng, director of the Administration Office of the Anti-Doping Commission, was cited as saying by the Xinhua news agency.
"So we set off working on a detailed prevention plan by the end of last year."
China, which finished third in the gold medal hunt in Sydney and hopes to match that in Athens, will conduct extensive out-of-competition tests among its 407 Olympic athletes.
"Besides the frequent random tests, we also focus on promoting an anti-doping awareness among the athletes and coaches," Shi said, but admitted that education about the dangers of performance enhancing drugs remained patchy.
He ackowledged that some athletes would still rather risk their health for good results.
"We opened anti-doping lectures for many sports teams during their winter training camps and such a lecture is scheduled for all the athletes ahead of their Athens trip," he said.
Given the embarrassment a high profile doping case would be for China in the run-up to the 2008 Games, Feng Shuyong, head coach of the Chinese track and field team, said his athletes were under strict orders to eat nothing but what the national team is given.
"They are also told not to buy medicine from drug stores when feeling ill. Only the team doctors can be trusted," he said.
"They must take every measure to avoid mistakenly taking any banned drugs."