BEIJING - CHINA is ordering its basketball players to stop faking their birth dates, local media reported on Friday, turning the spotlight back on allegations of systematic altering of athlete's ages.

Sports authorities have sometimes been accused of altering players' ages to show them as being younger, mainly to qualify them for youth tournaments.

Those false ages stay with athletes and can result in embarrassment and regulatory sanctions when athletes move on to greater success.

While that practice, known as 'age shaving', is considered widespread in sports such as basketball and football, the opposite was suspected in the controversy surrounding the women's gymnastics competition at the Beijing Olympics.

The international gymnastics federation eventually cleared the Chinese women's Olympic gold medal gymnasts of amending birth records to appear older than they were, but continues to investigate the ages of Chinese gymnasts who competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Female gymnasts are required to have attained a minimum age of 16 during an Olympic year to be eligible for competition.

While not limited to China, the problem of falsifying ages is considered particularly acute here due to the massive pressure on coaches and officials to produce victories and the apparent ease with which false documents can be obtained.

Greater transparency and new technology are helping authorities crack down, however.

Starting this season, the national basketball federation has begun to check ages given on players' identification cards against a national police computer database, prompting a spate of confessions, according to the Oriental Sports Daily newspaper.

In all, 22 players gave birth dates when registering for this year's season that were different from ones given last year, the paper said. Some players were found to be up to four years older than originally stated, it said.

Reports named two teams from the provinces of Liaoning and Jiangsu as the biggest offenders, with multiple players revealed to be faking their ages.

A spokesman for the Jiangsu Nangang club blamed the problem on provincial sports schools that first recruited the players.

'This year we're following the request to provide the true age of our players as shown on their ID cards. If there was a problem before, it was all in the past and it has nothing to do with our club,' said the spokeswoman, who declined to give her name because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

A Chinese Basketball Association official confirmed an investigation was ongoing, but would not give details.

'Yes, we're working on it,' he said.

Because some of the players named were on the national youth team's roster, the revelations could threaten international results going back six years, according to the popular Sina Sports Web site.

Age shaving is considered one of the main methods of cheating in sports next to using performance enhancing drugs and Chinese athletes have long been among the suspects.

In one particularly high profile case, Yi Jianlian of the men's national basketball team, who now plays for the New Jersey Nets, has been dogged throughout his playing career by allegations he was born in 1984 instead of 1987 as officially stated.

Many in the sport also remain dubious about the ages of China's women's Olympic gymnasts, citing different ages giving in registering for earlier competitions.

Chinese officials have vehemently denied the allegations, blaming the discrepancy over the age of one gymnast, He Kexin, on a simple mistake made in filling out paperwork. -- AP