The Chinese are coming. To Manchester first, for the Paralympic World Cup, which starts today. A team of 50 will compete across the four sports of cycling, swimming, athletics and basketball. China sent a women's wheelchair basketball team in 2006, but there was no team last year and they have not sent full delegations to Paralympic World Championships. So this week should provide a glimpse of what awaits in Beijing.

The largely unknown challenge that Chinese athletes will pose has spread excitement, and some fear, among rival competitors. Shelly Woods, from Britain, is one of the best middle and long-distance wheelchair racers in the world but knows very little about the threat from China. “Last month there was a race in Dubai, a 10km race, and there were seven Chinese girls who all raced 24 minutes, which is a world-class time,” the 21-year-old said. “No one has heard of them or seen them before. They've all just come out and with a sprint finish come within one second of each other.

“Someone [in the Great Britain team] will say 'did you see the results from that 10km?' so I think everyone is aware of it. I use the internet to find out how my rivals are doing. There are obviously a lot of them [Chinese] pushing fast and competing against each other. I think it will be very competitive in Beijing. I'm not overly worried, but I would have liked to have gone to Asia and raced these girls before. I know everything about my other competitors, but no one's raced them [the Chinese] before.”

Natalie Jones, 23, one of Britain's leading Paralympic swimmers, said: “We're not worried, but we know they're out to get us.”

China did not send teams to the Paralympic Games until 1984 and did not take the competition seriously until the Sydney Games of 2000, at a time when they were bidding to host the 2008 Olympics. Disabled people in China are largely unseen, although they are far from unique in that respect around the world. “Chinese athletes are still concerned about the stigma of being disabled, so a lot of players who qualify to play [in disabled sports] don't dare join in,” Xu Yuansheng, the China men's basketball coach, said. “We think the Paralympic Games are going to advance wheelchair basketball in China and we think more and more disabled people will come to love this game.”

There are an estimated 60 million to 90 million disabled people in China and there is greater official recognition of their existence. Among the many new sporting facilities being built around the country is a £55 million Paralympic Sports Centre in Beijing. Since 2004, China has been the Paralympic superpower. At the Atlanta Games in 1996, they broke into the top ten of the medals table with 16 golds; in Sydney in 2000 they came sixth with 34 golds; but in Athens in 2004, China was more dominant than any country in the modern era of the Paralympics since 1988, winning 63 golds and 141 medals. Britain was second with 35 and 94.

“We think China will win 70 to 75 golds in Beijing,” Mike Brace, the chairman of the British Paralympic Association (BPA), said. “We think they'll win twice as many gold medals as any other country.”

There have been differences between the BPA and UK Sport over Britain's prospects. UK Sport's target for Beijing is 40 golds and 110 medals, but the BPA thinks that 35 golds is more realistic. UK Sport wants the BPA to aspire to leading the table at the 2012 London Games. “Having come second in the last two Games, they want us to have the aspiration of coming first in London,” Penny Briscoe, the BPA performance director, said. “It's understandable that the aspiration is not to come third or fourth. But China has come from nowhere eight years ago to be top and other leading nations are improving.”

Briscoe said, however, that many of Britain's gold medals have come from successful individuals. “If Tanni Grey-Thompson had been injured in 2000 [when she won four golds], that would have wiped off 10 per cent from our total at a stroke,” Briscoe said.

All you need to know

The Paralympic World Cup includes athletics, swimming, track cycling and wheelchair basketball.

The competition was created to provide an annual world-class multisport event at which elite athletes could compete in between the four-yearly Paralympic Games.

340 of the world's best Paralympic athletes, from 47 countries, competed for 143 medals in four sports at last year's Paralympic World Cup.

The BBC will again cover the event as it continues to showcase elite disability sport before this summer's Paralympics.

Tickets are available on paralympicworldcup.com or by phone on 0871 2305595 or text WORLDCUP3 to 84880 for more information.