When it comes to asking not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, look to the Chinese.

With a record number of volunteers battling for a role in the Olympics, Beijing officials are now fretting about what to tell applicants who don't make the grade, or, just as likely, lost out to a government quota.

More than 358,000 Chinese applied to volunteer at next year's Olympic and Paralympic Games by the end of last month, six months after a recruitment drive began.

The resulting influx massively overshot the target quota of 70,000 for the Games, and 30,000 for the Paralympics, creating Olympic-size disappointment.

Although officials raised the Olympic quota from the Sydney (47,000) and Athens (60,000) Games, they have failed to keep pace with local enthusiasm.

This means telling most of the applicants that they're all out of luck.

The man who gets to deliver the bad news, Li Shixin, deputy head of BOCOG's volunteer department, said it was frustrating not being able to reward such humility.

"They're very experienced, yet they feel content to be a common volunteer," he said.

With competition for spaces likely to heat up as the Olympic juggernaut shudders ever onward, Li said there are other options for aspiring aides-de-camp.

"Voluntary services for the Olympic Games are not limited to the Games. There are other channels that allow people to serve, such as by becoming a 'city' or 'social' volunteer," he said.

Beijing plans in June to begin recruiting one million so-called social volunteers to help improve the city's manners and environment ahead of the Games.

They will be joined during the Olympiad by 400,000 city volunteers, stationed at major traffic hubs, scenic spots, hospitals, hotels and cultural centers.

But neither title commands quite the same respect as that of a Games-time volunteer, something Beijing's population of 12 million is only too well aware of.

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