China invited anti-doping officials from other Asian countries to give their experience in the fight against doping at a seminar that closed in Beijing on Monday.

China invited 27 anti-doping officials from 11 Asian countries including Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mongolia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos to the two-week seminar, giving lectures by Chinese anti-doping experts.

"We would like to help train anti-doping workers in Asia, who will be like seeds to grow into local anti-doping powers," said Wang Xinzhai, deputy office director of the China Olympic Committee Anti-Doping Commission. "It is one way that we fulfill our responsibility and commitment to the world's anti-doping fight," he added.

The First Seminar on Anti-Doping for Asia Countries Olympic Committees covered such topics as history and trend of the international anti-doping fight, latest improvement of international doping test, China's anti-doping policies and its achievements, doping control program in 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and doping test procedures.

Seminar participants said that they did learn a lot.

"Pakistan is very new in this field. So I think the seminar is very informative and educational. The host not only gave us very detailed lectures about doping control laws, methods and so on, but also took us to the new lab," said Naveed Akram Cheema, a sports official from Punjab, Pakistan. "It was very good, very impressive. Hopefully I can come back next year for the Beijing Olympics."

The seminar belonged to a foreign aid human resources development project sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce, assisted by the State General Administration of Sports and organized by the China Sports International Corporation (CSIC).

CSIC general manager Lu Guoguang said that they hope to hold more of this kind of seminars in the future.

"This is the first anti-doping seminar in our sports-related seminar series started since 2005. In the future, we may ask people from other continents to join us," Lu said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 20, 2007)