A visitor looks at a doping awareness poster during an anti-doping exhibition in Beijing January 17, 2007. China now has a lower number of doping cases than the international average, but the use of banned substances is spreading from elite athletes to the general population, a Beijing Olympics official said on Wednesday. The Chinese characters read "The harm of doping."[Reuters]

"As part of its zero tolerance approach to fighting doping, the International Olympic Committee has decided to increase the number of tests by a large amount," BOCOG executive vice president Yang Shu'an told reporters when attending an exhibition themed "The Olympic Movement and Anti-doping Drive".

"Final numbers are to be confirmed but are expected to be around 4,500, a 25 percent increase on Athens 2004," he added.

More than 3,500 tests were conducted during the Athens Games, also a 25 percent rise on the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.

The exhibition, which will run through Saturday, reviews a number of doping cases in the past years and provides video display of anti-doping test process as well as computer inter-action means for visitors to test their knowledge about the anti-doping combat.

It is the first of its kind proposed by Beijing to target a wider audience instead of a number of specialists in the history of the Olympic Games. Similar exhibitions are expected to be organized in 2007 and 2008 in various parts of China.