In Sydney, China's only track-related gold medal came in a women's walking event. This June, five-time Olympic gold-medal winner Michael Johnson of the U.S. traveled to Beijing to work with Chinese athletes. Johnson's visit was part of China's "119 Project," referring to the 119 gold medals available in track and field and aquatics.
China will take 138 more athletes to Athens than it did to Sydney, many of them first-timers. Several veteran stars such as badminton world champion Xia Xuanze and diver Li Na -- who won two gold medals in Sydney -- will be left behind.
Some say China is willing to forgo gold in Athens to bank on Beijing in 2008.
"We really want to take the opportunity provided by the Athens Games to let more young Chinese athletes participate in additional events so we can accumulate more experience for the Beijing Games," Chinese Olympic official Li Furong told reporters.
China's history in the modern Olympics dates to the first Los Angeles Summer Games, in 1932 -- with one athlete, Liu Changchun. He was eliminated in the preliminary rounds of the 100- and 200-meter dashes.
China took part in the 1936 Berlin Games, and again when the Games resumed after World War II in 1948 in London, winning no medals.
Thereafter, from the 1952 Games in Helsinki through the 1980 Games in Moscow, mainland China did not take part. For most of those years, "China" in the Games meant Taiwan -- owing in large measure to opposition to Communist China from Avery Brundage, an American who served as International Olympic Committee president from 1952 to '72.
It wasn't until the second Los Angeles Games, in 1984, that the mainland Chinese reappeared. Now China and Taiwan compete -- although Taiwan appears as Chinese Taipei.
Tensions remain high, even in Athens, where the Taiwanese have taken out ads on buses extolling their sports program.
"For almost all those years, China was actively campaigning to try to get back into the IOC," said Susan Brownell, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of a 1995 book about sport in the People's Republic. "There's a perception in the West they were boycotting. That's not fair. The amount of diplomatic effort they were putting out shows how much they wanted to be a player."
In Los Angeles 20 years ago, China won 32 medals, including the first gold of the Games, in shooting -- by Xu Haifeng, now a national hero. By 2000, China had risen to third overall and in the gold-medal count, behind the U.S., which won 39, and Russia, which received 32.
