China opened a new anti-doping agency yesterday which officials said would strive to be "the world's best" for the 2008 Olympics.

The China Anti-Doping Agency (CADA) formally started work at a new anti-doping laboratory in northern Beijing. The lab will test some 4,500 samples from athletes at next year's Olympics, under the supervision of the World Anti-Doping Agency and IOC, officials said.

The laboratory will hire more than 20 foreign experts and "skilful local volunteers" to form a 150-strong anti-doping team during the Games.

Chinese officials have been at great pains to assure the world its doping problems are a thing of the past after several scandals revealed systematic doping in the 1990s, but they concede that it has become a problem at the grass-roots level.

In September, US officials said the majority of drugs and raw materials seized in a nearly two-year probe into global trafficking of steroids were sourced from China.