* Would you be surpised to learn that East Asian's are smaller Europeans? * Would you be surprised to learn that East Asian girls/women have fewer/smaller curves than Europeans? * Would you be surprised to learn that East Asians who grew up in Asia are smaller than East Asians who grew up in the United States? * Would you be surprised to learn that East Asians develop later than Europeans? I don't have research on this, but that this is what my life experiences tell me. Does your life experience tell you otherwise? So, I would agree that the Chinese team sure looks young, to my American eyes. But so young that I can be sure that they are all under the minimum age? Not at all. Like you, and like viritually all of the Westerners watching these Olympics, I lack enough experience with Chinese born and raised girls to know how young/old a 16 year old might look.

Thanks for insightfully pointing out that Chinese females, on average, might be smaller than their Western counterparts. It's not some of the gymnasts' small sizes alone that have aroused suspicion, however. Rather, it's their small sizes combined with discrepancies in birth dates listed on official documents. Jiang Yuyuan (second from left in the photo), for example, has a birth date of Nov. 1, 1991, listed on her passport, but her national identification card number indicates she was born on Oct. 1, 1993. It's plausible that an authoritarian government might alter passports -- used for age verification -- to suit its needs. On the other hand, the discrepancies could be due to errors, but that's a lot of errors to have to explain.

You wear that color glasses then everything "could be" fake. Mary Lou Retton sounds like a world leading anthropologist in the NYT report, which itself sounds all but sour grapes to me! That is a lot of accusations, certainly fits well with the current hatred toward China in the "Free" press. Japanese is 1 inch higher and 5 pounds heavier, automatically making them 16+? Or it is because Japan is in the "free world"? You can easily find online statistics that in the young generation Japanese is actually higher and bigger than Chinese kids of the same age. What does that prove? NYT may write a full report based on could-be guesswork or google cache material which I would confidently GUESS they probably wrote by themselves. After all, to be successful in the current United States journalism, you have to bash china from time to time; don't you agree?

Tradiationally, in all western propaganda, Communist countries are, without exception, poor, backward, dirty, their people ignorant, closed-minded, and insensible, just like what people usually see in North Korea and Afghanistan. On the other hand, only the so-called democratic countries can achieve wealth, advancement, hygiene, openness and vigor, as people can usually see in the U. S., Japan, and Singapore. This stark dichotomy was established as a result of the western media's audios efforts in the past 50 years or so. In the western world, such belief is unmovable, as is the belief in God. As a matter of fact, such belief was never questioned even in many parts of the non-western world, including Asia, Africa and Latin America. For example, India believes that it leads China by at least twenty years, just because it is a "democratic" country, while China is not. We may safely say that in the past six decades, through the WII and then the cold war, the Western world which rallies around the Great Britain and the US has been making the rest of the world believe that unless a country obeys the world order specified by the West, unless it follows the Western model, that country is out of luck in the road to wealth and power. However, the west begins to worry as the Beijing Olympics is drawing near, an event that will show the whole world the charms of the Communist China. This worry was caused by the fact that China's economy has token off and has brought China continuous prosperity for three decades, yet China does not satisfy any of the preconditions for developing a rich wealthy and democratic country as prescribed by the West - namely, the multi-party system, openness of the media and financial sector to the west, Christianity , diplomatic obedience to the west-led international order, and most importantly, the Communist party not as a ruling party. In the past, the western mainstream media was able to selectively ignore these achievements in their China reports to continuously justify their ideology. However, now that the Olympics is going to be hosted in China; athletes from all over the world are descending on China and viewers from all over the world will set sights on China, it will be impossible for the western world to prevent the international community from witnessing China's progresses. What will people from the west think when they find that the Communist China enjoys booming economy, highly developed market, megalopolises even bigger than New York, highways that are newer and wider than those in America and Europe, and extensive public transportation systems, and that its people dress fashionably and drive BMWs, Audis, Bentzs and Hummers? What will they think when they found that the Communist China has highly developed Internet and communication systems and very open information system, and that in the cities almost everyone owns a cellphone; every three people own a laptop computer and public phone booths and public washrooms are everywhere? What will they think when they find that the Communist China's environment pollution problem is not as bad as they imagined and that many big cities are covered with green grasses and trees, filled with mountainous landscapes and half of a city is often covered by lake water? What will people from both the developed and developing countries think when they find that the people in the Communist China are very hospitable, educated, informed, intelligent and have dense consciousness of democratic republicanism and ownership? How are the western media ever going to explain the achievements proudly achieved by the Communist China ? To a great extent, these facts will destroy once for all the rigid and negative images of the Communist countries that the Western countries took several decades to establish, and lead the international community to think from a new perspective and continuously pay attention to China. The West has every reason to worry the kind of impact to their previous international order which is controlled and dominated by ideological dichotomy, when Communism is proven to be practical and when China under the leadership of the Communist Party becomes or is close to a developed country. If China can enjoy sustained development and persperity, then it will demonstrate to the rest developing countries a second independent approach to wealth and power . After witnessing the progresses that China has made, besides feeling surprised, the developing countries will also re-consider the ideas pumped into their minds by the West by questioning their validity. Even if they end up not copying Communism, they will still consider adopting or imitating many approaches taken by the Chinese Communist Party. This kind of ideological impact is disastrous to the whole Western world. This is because the first step the Communist China took to rise up as an independent country is driving away the Western powers, carried out land reform, and nationalizing the capitles of many multi-nationals. To quote what Mao Zedong said, this was to "confiscate the means of production of the mperislists and the buraucrat-capitalists." Once 5% of the 190 countries in the world copy the Chinese model, overthrow their governments and establish the Communist system guided by the Mao Zedong thought, and march towards the socialist road with national characteristcs, we can imagine the kind of impact this will have to the Western hegemony. Will the NATO, or the United Sates-Japan Alliance has enough power to suppressed these kinds of changes? As the saying goes, "nip it in the bud". No wonder the West is acting early to denigrate the Beijing Olympics and to denigrate China as a whole.

Look can be deceptive, and is particularly so in the case of female gymnasts. The Chinese gymnasts do look very young - my guess is about 12-14 years old - but as Sacramone said, she doesn't look 20 either. So we can only look at the official documents, and in a country like China, we all know how truthful it is. But - perhaps you would care to mention that Bela Karolyi is the husband of Martha Karolyi, the US team coordinator?