Nearly all of China’s 396 Olympians qualified for the Games under the patronage of the country’s monolithic Soviet-style sports system. Most are handpicked at an early age – as young as four – by scouts, and attend special schools to train in sports assumed to match physical attributes.

These schools began in the 1980’s when China made a move to stop being useless at major athletics and swimming championships. China’s communist regime decreed that a generation of future champions must be manufactured. School teachers were ordered to scrutinise their pupils for signs of natural sporting ability and report any child with obvious potential to regional coaches who would install them in one of 3 000 new state training camps.

While the schools have denied accusations that they are abusing the children, images of seven-year-olds performing 20 chin-ups is still disturbing. The issue has been reported on over the years, and surfaces every Olympics. While this is no evidence of abuse, a quote from a 2008 article in The Telegraph is almost Orwellian:

They are six years old and their faces show the strain of having to haul their heads above the bar repeatedly, but they do not utter a sound. Nor does any of their classmates, none older than 11, who are going through their drills under the watchful, un-smiling gaze of their coaches.

One of the worries is that the children are not only being trained from a young age, but they are also taking part in doping. Despite their protestations of innocence, China does have a sketchy record when it comes to their athletes and doping. In 2007 Ai Dongmei, a former national marathon champion, and two of her team-mates, won damages from their former coach, who had regularly beaten them and kept all their earnings. In 2006, the Liaoning Anshan Athletics School was found to be doping pupils as young as 15 with the hormones ­erythropoietin (EPO) and testosterone.

The focus is now on Chinese Olympic swimmer Ye Shiwen after the 16-year-old teenager took five seconds off her personal best and more than a second off the world record in the 400m individual medley, in a swim described as “insanely fast” by previous world record holder Stephanie Rice. She left her family as a child and was installed at Chen Jingluin sports school. By 11 she had won her first major junior championship.

[Sources: The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Sydney Morning Herald]