No idea!!!!! But by golly if they approach sport with the same enthusiasm as you approach writing your posts, they can't lose!!!!!!!!

they get taken away at an early age by the government to train their asses off.  so you see they have no real life outside winning gold. silver and brince are nothing but a huge loss of face. 

Large population base. Targeted identification programs and funding for large amounts of junior athletes to train long hours from an early age (until they are just as quickly discarded). They excel in many minority sports that require large amounts of practice such as diving. gymnastics, table tennis, badminton, shooting etc. Sports which have little chance of making money as a professional in most countries and as such have a very low participation base.    

just like the spanish government has done in the past few years, they invest a lot of money into sports, look at how much spain has achieved in 2010, if you watch the 3 clases of moto gp 2/3 of the people are spanish 10 years ago it was mostly italians, i think for a space of 2 years  a spanish person won the 125 gran prix  until a young british lad bradley smith came and won a race of his own

Chinese labor/training camps motto: "Munch all you want, we will make more."

Because they identify talent very early then invest a lot of time, a lot of money and an incredible amount of effort (not least on the part of the sportsperson).

To misquote one of my former colleagues, "Anyone can do that if they train hard enough!"

If you look at Olympic Medals per Capita they're really not that good.

You really do have an advantage with a massive population. You WILL have some freakishly strong kid and somewhere is a 7'2 villager with good hand-eye.

But that's not it. You have a system in place that not only seeks to identify the 'perfect physical specimens' but can be a superb (and possibly only) option for a kid's success.

      Now you take the kid into a state-sponsored 'lifer' program. Their kids are not attending a school with a class-A swimming program. No. Their kids are attending a life-time swimming school. Which also does basic scholastics on the side.

OK.

Now, of the ones that survive and are potential medal hopefuls. At age 16 (or younger) they are entered into full-time training. Forget school and play. This is full-time undivided intense 80 hour a week targeted Olympic-specific training.

           At age 18 you have a kid not only physically fit but basically has 10 times the hours (and high-level training) than say.. for example.. a British kid or the typical Australian kid.

And to ensure this is something you REALLY want to excel at? Remember, their athlete will ONLY know their sport.  And if they can win that gold medal? They can retire. Something like a 100,000 reward. (some say a million RMB) and 'set for life'. 

           The typical Australian track or swimmer or archer or whatever? Realistically, they MIGHT be lucky to get a cereal endorsement. $5000. Probably they have spent more money to become a gold medalist than they will actually earn from it.

Chances are they (and their parents) were already well aware a Gold Medal will NOT be a career. (some have even sold gold medals just to pay their rent years later) so they probably had to do well in school, work part-time at the supermarket, live normal lives AND also train on the side.

So big differences here. TBH I am more wildly impressed with Kenyans or Jamaicans because they don't seem to have much money at all, there is no cash glory or even 'hero status' that gives them nice lifestyles. They just seem to practice on a field somewhere. Yet, for rather small poor countries win what seems like a helluva lot of medals, world records and I swear about 30% of the finalists in the marathon sports were Kenyans and Ethiopians?

Actually, if you compare the size of the Chinese population with any other countries, you will see that China is not at all excellent, but rather far behind. Around 4 times more people than the US, but still the same number of medals. So no need to be that enthusiastic about China's performances.

Secondly, following the all Soviet-Union and naturally communist-like countries, the notion of sport is not the same. Most part of the countries send their athletes for competition and to measure up to the best : that's the athlete's mentality. China however send athletes to get as much medals as possible, without even considering the athlete's personal interests, all these just to show off to the world that China is a great country.

Thirdly, still in this same old-fashioned communist mentality, it's not an athlete who decides which sports to practice, it's the government who decides who does even if the athletes is not interested by the sport he/she is practicing, and without considering the injuries caused to young children to practice gym. An example is the Chinese fencing team during the Chinese Olympics Game, some of them were transferred from another sport to the fencing team even if they didn't have any interest in it. Without mentioning the mentality of the women badminton team.....

So please, I played sports intensively, I got many injuries, but what I can tell you is that when I watch a Chinese athlete winning a medal, I don't feel the same enthusiast as watching a, let's say, Jamaican winning a medal. A Jamaican will always remain a star and a hero among his people, and I would do recognize his efforts, as for Chinese athletes, I keep my skepticism and wonder when they will have to sell their medals just to buy a bit of food, as nobody (government included) will give a damn to them. 

So stop exhilarating about Chinese performances....because like many things in China, it's just an opaque window.

1.4 billion people...... gives a pretty good base to find your best athletes. Also, them and the US put far more people in the actual competition.

5,001 years of history, of course!

Crea,

         First of all, they don't get gold medals all the time. There have been some big upsets of the Chinese in this Summer Games. Second, in response to your question..doping!! lol lol! The Chinese are famous for this. Read the legendary articles about this regarding their athletes doping in the past.

because they put in there best to have the medals

anyways.......chinese will get the most gold medals........so my question will never change that fact........foreget it......2016 here we come!!!!!

Sounds a lot like modern day Roman gladiators to me. "Sure you can have your glory, but only if you win. Otherwise you're just another slave and you can die like a slave." State sponsored slavery. I'm curious about whether or not these athletes are able to walk away from training if they really wanted to, or is the pressure so great that they would be branded for life?

now its time for the us to surpass all the counries in the medal count their best events are now coming up track and field

China is only really good at sports that require lots of practice.  Sports like shooting, diving, ping pong, badminton etc.  Personally, growing up in America, I never knew badminton was a sport and thought ping pong was just a game for people who are not big enough or fast enough to play anything else.  In America the most popular sport is Football.  To play football, you have to be big, strong, fast, smart and super tough.  Girls and old people could never play football.  They would get killed!  This is why Americans love the sport so much because only a handful of people have all the skills needed to excel at it.  Any sport like badminton or ping pong which can be played equally good by a girl or an old person, leaves us limp. Personally being a world champion in ping pong or badminton is the same as being the sewing champ or the worlds best flower arranger.  It seems to me China is only very good at what I would consider "girly" sports.  Just my opinion.

My tiny poor country of 9 million people won two medals.  One gold, one silver.  That's one medal for ever 4.6 million people in the country.  Theoretically if my country had the same population as China, we would have won 282 medals! 

I think this has nothing to do with population. This is all about how much money the country invests into sports. and also how hard time the athletes have been through.

India has a large of population too. Why do not they win so many medals? the above is funny conclusion.

Looks like the Americans weren't interested in a repeat of the Beijing games and turned the heat way up in the 2nd half of this years event. They kept within striking distance for the first week and when the athletics began.........see ya!

Logic dictates that if your country participates in a sport that allows only one player per category then your country can win only one medal of any colour.   If your country participates in a sport that allows any amount of players per category then your country can win gold, silver and bronze.   I'm sure people can do the maths.

Perhaps they should change the rules in the pool and athletics, they did with cycling.