BEIJING -- The interior of the metallic and shiny Beijing Organizing Committee office building feels torn from a futuristic science fiction movie. In here, there's one set of numbers that everyone seems to know: 102-93-63. You would think that those numbers were a code, a confidential string of digits that perhaps unlocks a room, safe or state secret.

Though it's not quite that clandestine, make no mistakes, it is a code of sorts. The final medal tally at the 2004 Summer Games: United States 102, Russia 93, China, 63.

Depending on what you choose to believe or to whom you choose to listen, those numbers are a driving force behind the Summer Games, as China looks to flex its political and economic muscle on a global sporting stage. If unlocked, we will have the answer to one of the sporting world's biggest questions of 2008: Can China unseat the United States as the Summer Games' top medal winner?

Six months from now -- the Summer Games' opening ceremony is Aug. 8 -- we will begin to learn whether the sporting world's largest sleeping giant has finally awoken, whether China's athletic interests have kept pace with the growth and change that has cast much of the world's eyes on the Far East.

China's drive to becoming a world power is very much a sports story, and its plan to capture Olympic gold is methodical, detail oriented and, some fear, unstoppable. While the Chinese strive to stand side by side with other nations on the medal stands, in the lead-up to the Games, the differences in their sports system, athletic philosophies and Olympic preparations are becoming increasingly apparent.

Full-time commitment

Gao Jun won a silver medal at the 1992 Olympics for China. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Gaithersburg, about 40 miles west of Baltimore, and has competed for the U.S. team since.

She began playing table tennis when she was 5 years old. By the time Gao was 7, she had left her parents' home and lived full time at a special sports academy. As a child, every day from 8 a.m. until lights out at 10:30 p.m., it was school books and table tennis paddles. On weekends, she would visit her parents, always returning to the academy Sunday evening.

"When I was young, I never think, 'What should I do?' " says Gao, 38. "I just follow what my parents told me. I did miss them and I want to make them happy, and the way how I make them happy is I have to work hard and get good result. I think most Chinese kids will think and do the same way like me when they were like my age."

Unlike in the United States, where physical education is incorporated in most public schools, all of China's potential athletes are sent to special schools to focus on athletics. While many countries, such as the U.S., might have expensive facilities that cater to the very elite, China's sports schools are funded and operated by the government and cast a wide net over the nation's potential athletes.

There are three basic levels of sports academies in China, each progressively more devoted and focused to athletics and all designed to eventually feed the national Olympic team. While most American athletes still pass through public schools and perhaps even college athletics, nearly every Chinese athlete who finds Olympic success or a professional sports career passes through this sports school system.

Like Gao, Deng Yaping began playing table tennis at a young age, attending a regional school, provincial school and later one for national team members. She eventually won four Olympic golds and was named China's female athlete of the century.

Although Deng, 34, has reaped many benefits from China's sports system, even she recognizes some flaws with a program that puts athletics first. For those who don't find professional athletic careers, a limited education presents limited career opportunities. (Deng points out, too, that China is hardly the only nation that trains high-level athletes while de-emphasizing academics.) And the extreme time commitment required of the academies means some might suffer a sheltered childhood.

"Definitely you've gained something, you've lost something," Deng says. "You gain your achievements. You lose many great memories from your childhood."

China law prohibits most families from having more than one child. Because so many hopes and dreams are placed on the shoulders of a single child -- and because a youth sports career takes a child out of the family's home -- many find that the sports route carries a risk that outweighs the reward. For them, "it's safer to send children to regular school," Deng says.

She is a success story and is celebrated as one of China's most important role models for young girls. Deng retired from table tennis at 24 and had government support to pursue her bachelor's and master's degrees. She's working on her doctorate and is on the Olympic committee's payroll.

Deng says she's grateful every day for the opportunities she has. She spent a lifetime in schools alongside hundreds of others who had similar aspirations. Because they couldn't match her success, today they face different realties.

"But this is the life," she says.

Showing off 'system'

Sport in China, much like the country itself, has experienced unprecedented growth and change in the past three decades. With a population of 1.3 billion, the country's long-anticipated arrival on the world's sports stage parallels the nation's emergence in political and economic arenas. In fact, success this summer could be viewed as a symbolic win that transcends sport entirely.

"If you look back on history, what they're doing with these Olympics is completely consistent with how past communist systems have used sport," says Victor Cha, an associate professor at Georgetown who was the director of Asian affairs for the White House's National Security Council. He's writing a book about China and the 2008 Summer Games.

"They want to show the world the superiority of their system, and for their own people, they want to legitimize what is a flawed domestic system. Using sport as a way to say, 'We have a system that works.' I think for the Chinese, it will be nothing but disappointment if they do not win the overall medal count."

Making its Olympic debut in 1932, China didn't win its first medal until more than 50 years later. Protesting the International Olympic Committee's recognition of Taiwan, there wasn't a single representative from mainland China at the Summer Games from 1956 to 1984. Over the years, the size of China's Olympic team has grown from one athlete in 1932 to 224 in 1984. There were 311 in 2000 and 407 in 2004. More than 550 are expected this summer.

Many outsiders aren't quite sure what to expect out of the Chinese national team, though. The country has been hounded by doping allegations and even as it has tightened testing and cracked down on performance-enhancing drugs, the whispers continue. Chinese officials go to great lengths to insist their athletes are clean and to downplay the significance of the medal count.

"The objective of Beijing's hosting this Olympic Games is more to set up a platform to receive international athletes and to give them the best facilities and the best services that we can offer to help them perform the best in this Olympic Games," says Wang Hui, executive deputy director of communications for the Beijing Organizing Committee. "If they can really perform their best, all of the Bejingers will be very happy.

"Almost all of the Chinese I've been talking to are interested in the preparation of the Olympic Games. Nobody's really calculating how many medals we're going to win."

Chinese breakthrough?

102-93-63 -- to what lengths might the Chinese go to unlock this code?

Six months from the opening ceremonies, no one knows the answer to that question, but it will be one posed repeatedly with skepticism in the months to come.

In the mid-1990s, many Chinese swimmers tested positive for doping, and before the 2000 Games, China yanked 27 athletes off its rosters for questionable tests.

"We're all just guessing at this point," one prominent American coach says.

"Nothing would surprise me," says the coach, who has already taken a pair of fact-finding missions to China. "They could trot out this amazing super team or maybe the cards they're holding right now is all we'll see next summer. We just don't know."

While experts have been predicting since 2001, when Beijing was named host of the Summer Games, that China would field a dominant 2008 team, recent international results do not indicate it has closed the gap in many key events. There has been much speculation that China was hiding athletes and that this summer the Beijing medal platforms would be filled with previously unheard of athletes. The fact that Chinese Olympic officials have been downplaying their chances of surpassing the United States in the medal count has only fueled skepticism.

"I believe that's a misconception that the world has upon us," says Wang, the Beijing Organizing Committee official. "First of all, we don't think we're capable of being No. 1 in reaping the Olympic medals. For example, in the Athens game, even though we ranked No. 2 in the gold medals, for all of the medals, we were only ranked No. 3. America had 102, Russia had 93 and we only had 63. In terms of levels, we don't think we can get most of the medals next summer."

All over the world, press reports bill the Summer Games as China's "coming-out party." Cracking the code -- topping the United States and others in the medal count -- is about much more than sport.

Cha, the Georgetown professor, says China will hardly be the first to use the Olympic stage as a means to validate its place in the global order. He points to South Korea in 1988 and the Soviet Union in 1980, going all the way back to Nazi Germany in 1936.

"The Soviet Union historically didn't really focus on sport, but the 1952 Helsinki Games, that was the first time the Soviet Union participated in Olympics, and they exploded on the scene," Cha says.

But he points out there are two sharp sides to this sword. While host nations traditionally enjoy somewhat of a home-field advantage competitively and get a month of publicity and attention showered on their country and people, they're also exposed to inspection and scrutiny. Cha uses the 1988 Seoul Games as one of the best examples.

"There was so much effort to making sure the message was just right that in many ways, I think, they overdid it," he says. "What you got instead was a country that tried so hard to show the world it was modern and advanced; at the same time they showed the world how acutely insecure they were. I think you will have the same sort of dynamic in Beijing, really revealing insecurity as much as progress."

Comparing models

In search of the best table tennis training possible, Gao had to leave Gaithersburg. Her table tennis paddle, though, is still fully immersed in American and Chinese cultures. She's living in Shanghai and plans to represent the United States at the Beijing Games.

Gao is among the very few who have trained in the United States and China and represented both nations. The competitive fuel is different, she says.

"When I play for China, we learned that we play for country, not for our self," she says, "because everything that we get is from country."

Eventually, she says, the motivation becomes more complex and personal pride plays an increased role. Living and training in the United States offers her an autonomy and flexibility that few Chinese athletes enjoy. She makes her own schedule, decides her own pace and scribbles out her own calendar. In China, novices and Olympians alike follow a strict schedule, from their practice times to bedtimes to public appearances plotted and executed by coaches and handlers.

Gao is plenty familiar with the risks and rewards of sport in each country, which is why one question is a bit tougher than others: If you had a child who wanted to compete in sport, which country provides the better model?

"I think American parents give too much freedom to kids. But Chinese parents control kids too much," Gao says. "I think if you want to be a success in any sports, no matter where you live, with talent, you have to train hard, and you have to have some luck. All these come together, you can be success."

rick.maese@baltsun.com