China is willing to take constructive criticisms on loopholes in the country's fight against doping, said an anti-doping official in Beijing on Saturday ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games.

The official from the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) Anti-Doping Commission who declined to reveal his name said suggestions or well-grounded criticisms could help them improve on their work.

"We are not afraid of criticisms as long as they are well meant, because we truly want to catch drug cheats," said the official.

"I know this has been repeated many times but I still want to say that China is firmly against doping. And this is not what we just say. It is what we have done for a long time," the official added.

China started to carry out doping tests in 1990 when only 165 tests were conducted with a positive rate of 1.82 percent.

Last year, China's anti-doping lab, now part of the new China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA), completed 10,238 dope tests with 15 returning positive results.

In order to ensure a clean team for the August 8-24 Games, China has done 6,038 doping tests, 85 percent of them out-of-competition by the end of June 30. In July, COC announced eight positive cases as two national team athletes and their respective coaches were given life-time bans.

"So some reports just made me very uncomfortable and upset not because they were critical but untrue," he said.

On Thursday China's Ministry of Health said China has never approved of any hospital to offer performance-enhancing stem-cell therapy in response to a German TV report that some Chinese clinics claimed to be able to carry out what is described as gene therapy treatment for athletes.

"I am not in the place to comment on supervision over hospitals or control on drug production, but I sure can see the government's determination to crack down on doping," he said. "Fighting against doping, however, is not a task that can be achieved overnight."

The fight against doping in China has gone beyond the sport field as the government issued an anti-doping law in March 2004 before a Coordination Group consisting of 11 major government departments was founded in 2007 to tackle the problem.

Over the past two years, the country had launched several special investigations into performance-enhancing drugs to ensure a fair Olympics.

In these aggressive campaigns, 23 companies were punished for illegal drug trade, or selling sports performance enhancers that shouldn't have been available over the counter since last year.

In addition, three drug makers were ordered to suspend production of relevant drugs, while another 18 had their licenses revoked. Another 321 websites containing illegal drug trading information were shut down.

(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2008)