Gold medal winners, in official Government bonuses and other rewards, received #100,000 each after Atlanta. That is like a Briton, who earns a modest #20,000 per year, collecting #4m

RECENT sporting performances in China have provoked furious debate, with the planet's biggest nation topping the world drugs league for the largest number of positive dope tests in both swimming and athletics.

The dossier (right) is only a summary of the major rule-breaches, scandals, and improbable successes to have fueled suspicion and stretched credulity.

Yet the world has been swift to condemn without grasping the scale of the Chinese sporting machine, or making even the most superficial attempt to understand the world's oldest and most sophisticated culture.

The sport university in Beijing, China's largest and most prestigious, has nearly 3000 students spread over four years, producing some 200 physical education teachers and 200 coaches annually, plus 50 sports scientists, 50 sports managers and some 200 martial arts graduates annually.

Moray House, Scotland's only PE university, expects to graduate an average of around 73 such teachers in each of the next three years, and perhaps 10 coaches on masters degrees. China has more than 200 universities with PE departments, graduating thousands of coaches and teachers annually, on four-year courses, as in Scotland.

They walk into immediate jobs. Many British PE graduates do not.

Dong Jin Xia is a former member of the Chinese national gymnastics squad, currently studying for a PhD at Strathclyde University. Her husband is a professor at Beijing University, where Jin Xia, 35, earned a bachelor's degree in physical education and a masters in coaching. This week, she lifted the Orient's inscrutable mask to give an illuminating glimpse of sporting life behind the Bamboo Curtain.

''First,'' she insists, ''you should try to understand our culture.''

In China, Jin Xia, a senior lecturer, earns #500 a year. Her country's Olympic champions, in official Government bonuses and other rewards, received #100,000 each after Atlanta. That is like a Briton earning #20,000 per year, collecting #4m - the equivalent of winning the National Lottery.

Most Chinese sports men and women, of course, earn nothing like #500 a year. ''Many of our best sports people are from rural provinces,'' says Jin Xia. ''In the early '80s, a man there might earn #30 per year. Today, it would be perhaps three times that.

''I see big houses in your rural areas - but no rich people live in the country in China. University entrance is so competitive that very few children educated in the country have a chance of going.

''If you are poor, you cannot move to the city to find better-paid work. You need a residence permit for the city. Without one, you cannot get a job, housing, or send your child to school. But if you are successful in sport, and gain selection to the provincial team, your whole life is changed. You have social mobility. As a member of that team, your service benefits begin.''

This means entitlement to salary, pension, and residence permit. ''Being a member of a provincial team is your job. You are a full-time sportsman or woman, entitled to subsidies, food, and clothing. Every family encourages a child with sporting talent. Westerners would call it a passport out of the ghetto.''

Not just for the child, but possibly the whole family.

''There are some 40 provinces in China. Each has a professional full-time team in every single Olympic sport, plus the martial arts. All provincial teams compete against each other in all of these sports at the National Games.''

The level of competition is often higher than at the Olympics.

''It is on membership of the provincial team that your lifestyle depends. Your salary depends on being in the province team - not on being chosen by China for the Olympics.''

There is a pause while this sinks in. Forty professional teams in swimming, athletics, volleyball, basketball, boxing, cycling, gymnastics . . . every one of around 25 sports contested in the Olympic Games. Each with its specialist doctors, nutritionists, psychologists, physiologists, biomechanics experts, physiotherapists, and coaches. The thought intervenes that when Britain's Sports Institute opens, it will still not match one hundredth of the level of input which China's 1300 billion makes to sport.

China has built more than 7000 swimming pools since the cultural revolution, and has 10,000 swimmers in elite training programmes under 2400 specialist coaches, all of whom have completed four-year degree courses. Scotland has two Olympic swimming pools, a national elite squad of 599, only 15 of whom are adults, and 16 full-time professional coaches.

While studying in Glasgow, Jin Xia has been helping coach the Scottish gymnastics squad preparing for the Commonwealth Games. All of the contenders began in recreational gymnastics, but in China, Jin Xia reveals: ''There is very little recreational sport. Children who do gymnastics do so because they show exceptional talent. Those who don't have talent do not get the chance to do it, for what you would call 'fun'. Only very recently has China begun to have public-access sports centres. There are not many.

''Most of your coaches are volunteers. It is a hobby for them, done in the evenings and at weekends. In China coaching is a profession, full-time, and only for those who have completed years at university. Your competitors often do not listen to their coaches. They lack discipline, demanding to move on to more complicated exercises without mastering the basics. That is one reason why they fail. Your gymnasts do not train for anything like as many hours as the Chinese.

''Yet we are not obsessed by sport, like people seem to be in Scotland. We have more respect for academic study, people with knowledge and learning.''

As I raise the issue of coach Ma feeding caterpillar fungus and turtle meat to his army of endurance athletes, with the scepticism of one convinced of dubious methods, she points to thousands of years of medicine and nutrition which the West understands little.

''In Hunan, where I come from, summer is very hot. Those who can afford it eat turtle meat. Don't ask me to explain the nutrition science. I cannot. But if you eat it, you do not feel the heat. Nor do runners. In winter, when it is cold, we eat dog. After you eat dog, you feel very warm.''

As Jin Xia went to coach her Scottish gymnasts, like Gayle Campbell who this week smashed the Commonwealth selection criteria, there was unsettling food for thought: If Britain had 10,000 potential Olympic swimmers bidding for a personal lottery win, and vast numbers, motivated by similar largesse, pursuing life-changing entry to professional teams in every sport, could we hope to escape with as few dope cheats as China?