I think I heard during the Summer Olympics that China's government is beginning to invest in its baseball programs to become more competitive with the rest of the world. If that's the case, it could be working much quicker than anyone anticipated, because I remember them getting lit up during the Olympics...
They started right when they got the bid for the Olympics. I have friends that went over their and made REALLY good money to teach kids to play. It was funny because at first they chinese just sent them a bunch of athletes and told them to make them baseball players. After a while, they were able to convince them to set up a number of youth leagues to start them younger... I am suprised that they were able to be competitive already though, I thought it would be years down the line....
FWIW, Italy is doing a similar thing hiring Americans to teach baseball. I got an offer right out of college to go over there and play in a 'professional league', coach little league, get a free apartment and car plus a nice salary... Still not sure why I didn't do that...