[9] The 1994 Hiroshima games saw seven Chinese swimmers along with a hurdler, a cyclist and two canoeists stripped of their medals after testing positive for the steroid dihydrotestosterone.
FINA and the Olympic Council of Asia noted in the same month that there was not enough evidence to say organised doping was occurring in China, but the former said more testing was needed.
IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch said drug use by Chinese athletes had hurt that country's hopes of holding the Summer Games.
[15] Several past Olympic champions also defended Ye, including former British swimmer Adrian Moorhouse who said: "I understand it’s about China’s system.
"[16][17] In February 2016, Tencent Sports reported a letter written in 1995 by Wang Junxia and nine other track athletes, who claimed that women coached by Ma Junren were forced to take "large doses of illegal drugs over the years".
[33] On 23 April 2024, ARD released a documentary, "The China File",[34] where USADA's CEO Travis Tygart suggests of a "cover-up" by WADA and Fritz Sörgel, a toxicologist and pharmacologist, deems the contamination explanations to be "implausible".
In separate statements, Tygart once again criticised WADA of its handling of the positive tests and said TMZ "doesn't magically appear, fairy dust in a kitchen.
[35] USADA, along with the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Rahul Gupta, called for an independent investigation into the matter.
[36] In a statement on 25 April 2024, WADA responded to these allegations by appointing Swiss attorney Eric Cottier as an independent investigator to review its handling of the case.
His interim report stated, "There is nothing in the file... to suggest that WADA showed favouritism or in any way favoured the 23 swimmers who tested positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) between January 1 and 3, 2021.
Jinxia Dong, an associate professor at Peking University, said that the doping programme was a by-product of the "open door" policy which saw the rapid expansion within China of modern cultural and technological exchanges with foreign countries.
[55] Bioethicist Maxwell J. Mehlman in his 2009 book The Price of Perfection, states that "In effect China has replaced East Germany as the target of Western condemnation of state-sponsored doping".