BEIJING - The teeny-tiny women on China's Olympic gymnastics team will don their teeny-tiny leotards Sunday to perform big gymnastics in the women's qualification at the Beijing Games.

Bela Karolyi, the former coach of gymnastics stars like Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, said their size should raise a red flag.

The smallest of the six competitors is Deng Linlin, 4 feet 6 inches and 68 pounds. The team's average size is 4-9 and 77 pounds. That is 3 ½ shorter and nearly 30 pounds lighter than the average for the United States team. Shawn Johnson, a favorite in the all-around, is the only American gymnast both shorter than 5 feet (4-9) and lighter than 100 pounds (90).

The ages of the Chinese gymnasts have been a topic of conversation for months, but it has reached a fever pitch here. To compete in Beijing, the gymnasts must turn 16 in this Olympic year.

"This is a joke," Karolyi said last week. "We are people who have had children of our own, so we know what a 16-year-old should look like. They should not look like they are 7 and maybe still in diapers.

"What the Chinese are doing is a slap in the face of the whole world, but there is nothing we can do about it."

Recent reports, including one by The New York Times, said that three of the six members of the Chinese team might be younger than the minimum age of 16. Several Chinese sports registries showed that He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin did not meet that age requirement.

Chinese authorities have produced passports to prove those gymnasts are old enough to compete. The international gymnastics federation, known as the F.I.G., issued a statement Saturday, saying the passports were proof that the Chinese were playing fair. International Olympic Committee officials agreed.

"To our understanding, both sides have cleared up this matter," said Giselle Davies, an I.O.C. spokeswoman, referring to the F.I.G. and China's Olympic committee. "We feel comfortable having heard feedback from people directly involved with the athletes."

A passport, however, may not be undisputed documentation of a gymnast's age. Yang Yun won two bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Games, in the uneven bars and as a member of the Chinese team. The United States team finished fourth.

Afterward, Yang said on state-run television that she was 14 when she competed at the Games. A Hunan Province sports administration report confirmed that.

"The medal was supposed to be ours, and we should be given it," said Karolyi, the coach of the 2000 United States team, referring to the bronze medal in the team event. "Now some girls are left crying forever while nothing is done about the cheaters. If the I.O.C. is closing their eyes to this, they are proving that they have turned completely political. Why don't they look at the birth certificates?"

Nothing has been done about that potential age violation since Yang's video recently surfaced on the Internet.

Another I.O.C. spokeswoman, Emmanuelle Moreau, said the committee had "the mechanism in place" to deal with a case of an under-age athlete who wins an Olympic medal, but she would not elaborate.

The responsibility remains with the international gymnastics federation, she said.

Officials from the F.I.G. said Saturday that they did not plan to investigate Yang's claim that she broke the rules because no documents were involved.

"As long as the passport ages are the same as in the past as today, there is no reason for the F.I.G. to take any action," Andre Gueisbuhler, the secretary general, said.

The federation's president, Bruno Grandi, acknowledged that age falsification remained a problem in gymnastics. To battle it, he said, the federation will issue licenses to gymnasts next year. The athletes will need those licenses to compete internationally, even in junior events. It will be issued upon review of the athlete's passport.

To many gymnasts here, speaking about the under-age issue is taboo. Several said they did not want to embarrass their host. Others said the ages were not troublesome.

"There's nothing we can do about it, so why worry?" Alicia Sacramone of the United States team said.

Enrico Casella, the coach of the Italian women's team, had an idea to do away with age questions: create weight classes. That way, gymnasts of similar weight could compete more equally against one another, and the age minimum could be scrapped.

Until then, he said, there will always be rumors that athletes are too young. Looks could be deceiving, he said.

"By looks, you could say that the United States is using doping," Casella said. "They are so muscular. My gymnasts in Italy aren't that big. You begin to wonder how they got that way."