BEIJING, Aug. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- China looks far beyond Athens in spite of a largest ever Paralympics presence in this year's games in Athens, an official of the China Paralympic Committee (CPC) told Xinhua here on Thursday.

    China sends a 286-member delegation including 200 athletes to the 12th Paralympic Games to be held September 17-28 in Athens. China was represented by a contingent of 87 athletes four years ago in Sydney, where they won 34 gold to rank three slots up from the previous games to the sixth, and 22 silver and 16 bronze medals for a medal tally of 72.

    China targets in Athens at improving gold medal rankings and medal tally from Sydney at one hand and, more importantly, having the athletes more matured for the 2008 games in Beijing, said Jia Yong, vice-president of the CPC.

    With only 39 athletes from the previous games, the 161 other athletes bound for Athens are green hands and they represent more than 80 percent of the total number.

    The CPC, China's national governing body for sports by athletes with physical and mental disabilities has established a second-string team with 1,500 athletes for the Beijing Games, saidZhao Sujing, CPC's deputy secretary-general. They had begun training last year in more than a dozen Chinese provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, in their build-up for the Beijing games four years later.

    Chinese government has allocated a considerable sum of funds for the establishment and operation of the China Paralympic SportsAdministrative Center earlier this year. And construction has started for a multi-purpose national Paralympic sports training base in Beijing's suburban Shunyi County, Zhao said.

    "We have worked out plans to field world-class athletes commensurate to our status as the hosts in the 2008 games in Beijing," Jia added. Enditem