Dick Pound also noted that China is viewed as a source for illegal drugs via the internet, and he called for tougher anti-doping measures leading up to the Beijing Olympics.
"I don't know whether there is a solution prior to 2008, but it is a problem and they recognize it and are trying to address it," said Pound to the Associated Press.
"The world is going to assess the success of the games in Beijing not just if the buses run on time but on whether or not their (sic) is an effective national anti-doping process in China," he said. "If China appears with athletes who nobody ever heard of and wins all the gold medals, that would be a problem and the games would not be a success."
China, which has more citizens than any other country, carried out 2,000 doping tests in 2005, as many as Australia, a country with 21 million people according to the AP. China's population exceeds 1.3 billion, or one-fifth of the world's total, according to Wikipedia.
"There has been some scientific research done which suggests that benefits of using steroids last much more than two years," Pound said to the AP. "That gives some weight to increasing the penalty in some of those cases. There's a good argument to be made for it and we will consider it."
