BEIJING – With an extravagant opening ceremony that will celebrate its ancient past and optimistic present, China will ring in the XXIX Olympiad at 8:08 Beijing time tonight – 08-08-2008.

The Chinese, you might have noticed, believe the number eight portends prosperity. As it happens, many rival-nation officials believe that over the next 17 days, China will emerge as the world's new athletic superpower.

The United States and Russia are expected to contend for the most gold and overall medals. But the casting of China as the favorite is a remarkable occurrence for a nation that didn't win its first Olympic medal until 1984.

"We're not used to being an underdog in the [Summer] Olympic Games," U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth said. "So we'll get used to that and do our best."

America boasts the marquee athlete of these Games in swimmer Michael Phelps. It has won the most medals in 15 of the 25 Summer Olympics since 1896.

But along with media reports about Beijing's pollution and China's social policies, Americans should brace themselves for a parade of Chinese on medal podiums.

That would continue an upswing from the five gold medals the Chinese won in 1988. They won 16 in 1992 and 1996, 28 in 2000 and 32 in 2004.

China's gold medal haul four years ago in Athens was surpassed only by the United States' 35. Their 63 total medals trailed America's 102 and Russia's 92.

Before previous Olympics, USOC officials have announced target medal numbers. Not this time.

"Four years is a long time between Athens and Beijing," said Steven Roush, the USOC's chief of sports performance. "The Chinese have become much stronger than in 2004."

What's going on in China? The short answer, Olympics observers say, is that a former sleeping giant of 1.3 billion people decided to pour resources into sports.

The longer explanation is that China had the patience to build methodically, Olympiad to Olympiad, a few sports at a time.

Dallas Mavericks president Donnie Nelson has had a unique vantage point. Known for his eye for foreign talent and his overseas connections, he took interest when the Chinese Basketball Association formed in 1995.

Nelson watched one of its early standouts, Wang Zhizhi, star in the 1996 Olympics. Dallas drafted Wang in 1999, but it took Nelson two years of negotiating with the government and Wang's army club to allow him to become China's first NBA player.

Wang's NBA career fizzled, but he paved the way for Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian to come to America. Nelson recommended the hiring of then-Mavericks assistant Del Harris as coach of China's 2004 Olympic team and former Lithuania coach Jonas Kazlauskas to lead this year's Chinese team.

Nelson is in Beijing as a China assistant. After the team's Thursday evening practice at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Stadium, he marveled at how far and fast China has come.

"From a basketball perspective, it's a miracle," he said. "They have produced two of the best international players the NBA has seen in a while. We were focused on the European market for so many years, but it's nice to know that the Asian basketball community is starting to galvanize."

If there was a seed that started China's beanstalk-like growth spurt, it was planted in 1981.

The Chinese had not competed in a Summer Olympics since 1952, boycotting because of the presence of Taiwanese athletes.

But in 1981, China came out of nowhere to win the women's volleyball World Cup, led by young "Jenny" Lang Ping.

"A huge thing happened in China after," Lang Ping, 44, recalled this week. "At that time especially, China wasn't an open door. I think the World Cup gave people confidence to have a better life, to fight to be connected to the world."

Entering the summer of 1984, the Los Angeles Olympics and its CEO, Ueberroth, desperately needed the Chinese to return to the Games.

The Olympic movement was in shreds following the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which America and 64 other nations boycotted in protest of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

Ueberroth said he received a list of 150 countries that planned to join the Soviets in boycotting the Los Angeles Games. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles committee reached out to the Chinese.

"When China decided they were coming and surprised the world, Romania followed and the former Yugoslavia followed," Ueberroth said.

Ultimately, the Soviets and 14 Eastern Bloc countries boycotted. But the Chinese delegation received a standing ovation when it entered the Los Angeles Coliseum for the opening ceremony.

China won 15 golds, including a Lang Ping-led title match victory over the Americans. In these Olympics, Lang Ping is coaching the American team.

"I really stand in awe coming here, to see what they've done," Ueberroth said of Beijing's sparkling, architecturally acclaimed venues.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge on Thursday predicted the 2008 Games will allow viewers "to discover a country that for most people in the world is mysterious," adding, "I think this will change the perception of China for the world."

The world's reigning sports superpower is already on watch.

"The sports infrastructure, the coaches being developed and the young people who will be inspired by these Games, we think this is a formidable system that we'll have to contend with for a very, very long time," USOC CEO Jim Scherr said.

"Shifts in political status or economic shifts in this country won't affect this system the way dislocation of the late '80s affected the Soviet Union's system. So this system we know is here to stay."