To alter one of the Chinese Communist party’s slogans; ‘Eighty per cent good and twenty per cent bad’ will do for XXIII Paralympic Games, which closed in Beijing today. That means it fares about ten per cent better than Mao Zedong does here these days, but there was still room for improvement.

Now it really is over to London for 2012. Anotherover-complicated eight minute handover segment by the London organisers, designed more for television than a bemused stadium, showed the challenge ahead.

The Beijing organisers delivered on their promise of 'Two Games, Equal Splendour'. Proud crowds have packed Paralympic events like never before, particularly in the Bird’s Nest stadium, which often held crowds of 70,000. The organisers said approximately 1.5 million people attended, including 600,000 given away to their student programme.

Whether it is a “milestone in the rights of the disabled people in China,” as Wang Wei, Secretary General of the Beijing Organising Committee, said, remains to be seen. As does Sir Phil Craven’s claim “that China are to here to stay (as a Paralympic force).”

But the International Paralympic Committee has demanded parity and they got it. That they were not entirely ready for it is already cause for introspection. The Paralympics is a young movement and its marketing and politics is slightly ahead of its sport, which it must be said is riveting in the main part too.

The classification of athletes according to their ability or disability remains a vexed issue, partly because there are so few competitions outside of these Games in which to test athletes. But whilst that is a valid reason, you cannot get away with asking people to take you as seriously as the Olympics and then say ‘but we’re only little’ when problems arise.

The IPC have promised that want to avoid the situation of athletes being classified at Paralympic Games. It is not a small problem. Athletics, for instance, does not have a major competition planned until the world championships in New Zealand in January 2011.

The IPC said that the plan is for the individual sporting federations to run their sports at the Paralympics, rather than the IPC. An IPC delegation will go to Monaco in the winter to talk to the IAFF about running the athletics programme at the London 2012 Paralympics. Cycling was run by the International Cycling Union (UCI), likewise archery, table tennis and equestrianism. This marks a significant move away from the origins of a Games set up and run by the various disability associations.

There were four athletes sent home from these games and banned for failing doping tests, three from by the IPC tests in powerlifting and one German wheelchair basketball player, from a test at home before the Games.

But far more significantly were the classification statistics. The Times has been told that during the course of the Games there were 99 functional reclassifications, 63 visual impairment reclassifications and 13 athletes reclassified again after their first appearance in front of the classifies. Of those there were at least two declassifications. Rebecca Chin, the 16-year-old British discus thrower, finished second in a competition in which she was being called a cheat by fellow competitors, only to be then thrown out of Games.

The British team said she had come with what they thought was a lower leg disability, had been told by classifiers that she had cerebral palsy, and then finally that it was too mild for her to be a Paralympian. That fate had earlier befallen Derek Malone, the Irish 7-a-side cerebral palsy football player, in competition that was brought into disrepute by accusations of cheating.

Classification is to the Paralympics what doping is to the Olympics and with money coming into Paralympic sport, cheating will become ever more attractive.

‘Boosting’, the dangerous practice of causing a surge in adrenalin in the body by creating trauma in the non-functioning parts of disabled athletes’ bodies with pins, nails, catheters or ball-bearings in the right place, seems to be less common now. But pre-competition techniques to beat physical and neurological classification tests are rife if you believe some athletes. The desire is to make yourself seem more disabled and thus ensure that you are put in an easier class. In that sense ‘bounding’ may be the new ‘boosting’ and the Times has been told that cerebral palsy athletes jumping up and down for an hour before their tests, so as to appear less stable and symmetrical, is one technique used.

The Great Britain team had a good, though not great, Games. The curve of improvement was less dramatic than for the Olympic team heading into a home Games in four years time. But then holding onto second – for the third Paralympics in a row, is harder than jumping up the table.

Britain was never going to beat China, who with 89 golds and 211 medals had more than double Britain’s 42 and 102. In terms of golds, the British team exceeded UK Sport’s expectation of 40. In terms of medals, however, they were ten short of the target of at least 112.

That was largely down to the failure of athletics, albeit over the last eight years, rather than simply here. The target of 30 medals was never realistic, given the team. They won 17 as they did in Athens, but only two were gold – both for David Weir, the wheelchair racer, who decided against attempting the marathon yesterday morning – compared to six in Athens.