A senior Chinese basketball official has admitted China had been guilty of fielding over-aged players in youth internationals.

"I'm sorry to say that some of our past results from international youth games were not real as we had some over-aged players in the squads," Xinhua quoted Zhang Xiong, director of the training and research department of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), as saying on Tuesday. "But from now on, we promise to have real U-18 or U-20 national teams compete in our internationals."

Zhang did not elaborate as to which international matches had been tainted, but said that future age fraud would be dealt with harshly in a new registration policy implemented by the CBA.

"Age fraud is the cancer of the development of our youth teams. We will start a war against age fraud as we have against doping," Zhang said.

Under the CBA's "Notice of Registration", players who fake their age will be banned and teams fined up to 10,000 yuan ($1,270), Xinhua said.

Teams with three or more players found to have faked their age would be banned from competition for a year, and their coaches suspended for four years under the policy.

The CBA will also introduce "bone age detecting machines", and require that players provide proof of age from local government level, residence permits, identification cards and half-length photos when registering for youth teams.

Chinese media regularly slates national youth teams for stocking squads with over-age players to ensure good results.

Source: China Daily