A silver medal is like fourteenth place - that was the message relayed recently to China's Olympians. And, with six months to go today until the Beijing Games, this is why you would be hard-pushed to find a group of professional sportsmen and women who are under more pressure than the the home team at the Olympics in the summer.

They must do it for their country and for the Party, and it must be gold. Nothing else is good enough. And, crucially, they must win more gold medals than the United States.

From the outside, Westerners sit in wonderment: what are those Chinese up to? Before 1984, China had not won an Olympic gold medal; they won 32 in 2004, four fewer than the US, so they represent the fastest-growing Olympic force since East Germany.

The similarities with the East German model raise the fascination, too. China is also working hard behind a veil of secrecy. Likewise, China has had doping issues. The difference is that, on this occasion, the secrets can get out.

China's search for expertise has been so comprehensive that they have been flying in world-class coaches from the West as fast as they can write them world-class cheques. Russians and Romanians for the most part, but Western Europeans and Americans, too. One coach said that there were 65 top-class coaches who had been imported and are in employment, another said more than 100.

What this tells us immediately is that no one has the complete story. Together, though, they seem to agree on one thing - that China's obsession with heavy training is taken to such extremes that even if they do sweep the medals at their own Games, they will be seriously underperforming.

Some Western coaches have been asked by their Chinese employers to be tougher on the athletes. This astonished Andre Ehrenberg, a German canoe coach who is now head coach in Poland and who spent 13 months as a China coach until last October.

“The Chinese coaches I met did not know what was effective training,” he said. “They would see what others do, copy it and double it. They thought, ‘Double is better'. That is flawed thinking, but they don't really listen to foreign coaches. The question I always asked myself was, ‘Why did they hire me'? I know that since I left they have simply increased the volume and intensity of training again, so the pressure on the athletes goes up further.”

Diederik de Boorder, a Dutch rowing coach who worked in Henan province for a year after the 2004 Olympics in Athens, had similar frustrations. “I showed them the training programmes we use in the Netherlands and they didn't believe me,” he said. “They just laughed.”

Tim McLaren, the Australian rowing coach who was employed as a consultant to Jiangsu province, said: “They trained three times a day every day, with no breaks. I know of other countries that train hard, but I know no countries that do not rest to aid recovery.”

The result is that we will not necessarily see the best Chinese athletes at the Beijing Games, simply those who physically can endure the most. “They think of their athletes like machines,” Ehrenberg said. “And they don't look after their machines very well. If one doesn't work, they'll just find a new one.” The end product will be mentally tough. One coach said that maybe the broad absence of religion explained why “they're willing to sacrifice more and do things for authority figures that we'd never do in the West”.

De Boorder gave one such example. “If you signed a contract for Henan rowing, you had five days off a year,” he said. “But China is very big and you can hardly travel to your family and back in that time, so they might have two years away from home. They would be allowed one phone call a week, but with a coach sitting next to them.”

Which makes you wonder about motivation. The answer lies in money. The richer provinces pay £7,500 a year, three times the average national salary. “The athletes do it because they are paid to,” Ehrenberg said. “I tried to teach the athletes about the spirit of the Olympics, but they didn't have a clue. It is their job, their income; glory and triumph come a distant second.”

The testimony of these coaches flies in the face of popular thinking that China is making ground-breaking advances. “Their big advantage is that they are full-time athletes, so they can train without distractions,” Ehrenberg said. “To me, that is their only advantage.”

McLaren said: “Where they are ahead is they have big, big numbers - that and commitment. I couldn't see what the other advances are.” Furthermore, while in the West coaches eternally attempt to lift the pressure from their athletes, in China the opposite appears to be the case. “It's all, you must do this for your country, for your province, for the party,” Ehrenberg said.

De Boorder said: “There is so much money involved and they have to beat the US. Gold? And you get two Bentleys. No gold? All those coaches, all those jobs, they are all fired. It's black and white. I felt that pressure in 2005. I can't imagine what it is like now.”

These are the observations of another Western coach, who did not wish to be identified: “There is a lot of internal competition between coaches. They don't share resources, compare notes or work together as a team. It's also hard for them to be innovative. They can do free thinking, but politically they believe they're not supposed to. In Chinese hierarchy, it's who's right, not what's right. That must err against improvement.

“And the Chinese mentality is completely different. What I preach is: forget about winning, just focus on being your best because that is all you can control. The Chinese are different. They say, ‘You have to win for the fatherland'. For me, that just brings on the pressure.”

For many outsiders, when Beijing comes around, the question will be all about doping. However, if the Chinese are using performance-enhancing drugs, they are not allowing their Western imports to witness it. “I didn't see it,” De Boorder said. “But there was so much talk about scientific EPO [erythropoietin], my gut feeling is that they are using it.”

A consenus is this: at national level, China are unlikely to be cheating because positive dope tests during or before their home Olympic Games would be a monumental own goal. At provincial level, though, the situation may be different; inter-provincial competition is fierce and the financial rewards for success are huge.

What is clear is that the sporting culture of this summer's Olympic hosts is light years from ours, and you wonder whether or not this will be to their advantage. “In some areas, China are behind rather than ahead of us,” McLaren said. Ehrenberg said: “They will not dominate the way that people think. By training so hard, in some sports it simply doesn't work.”

And De Boorder said: “With all the stress, I think they will freak out.”

All of which is worrying for the rest of the world. China are challenging to be top of the medals table this summer; we can only wonder how far they will be ahead when they get their act together.

China’s medal progression at the Olympic Games:

1984 US: total medals 174, gold 83; China: 32, 15.

1988 US: 94, 36; China: 28, 5.

1992 US: 108, 37; China: 54, 16.

1996 US: 101, 44; China: 50, 16.

2000 US: 97, 40; China: 59, 28.

2004 US: 102, 36; China: 63, 32.

Shooting is one of the sports on which China have a stranglehold. In 2004 they won nine shooting medals, the US won three. In the US, there are two Olympic training facilities. It is reported that in China there are more than 100.

China have never won an Olympic rowing gold, but a sign of their strength came in last year’s World Cup event in Amsterdam — they topped the medal table with five golds.

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