Medal counting for assessment apparently on, then off

To clean up scandals in Chinese sports, the country's sports authorities should end the obsession with winning medals by introducing more diversified criteria for performance assessments than merely the results of competitions, observers said.

The General Administration of Sport of China, the country's top sports regulatory body, has been mired in controversy after it announced on its website that the medal tally of provincial teams for the 2017 National Games will be published as usual - a move inconsistent with its earlier claim that medal counting would be eliminated.

The administration had said in January that it would no longer rank provincial delegations by number of medals earned - a response to a report by the country's top anti-graft agency that attributed a series of scandals involving match-fixing, talent selection and drug use to the blind pursuit of medals in the sports system.