BEIJING, China (AFP) — China celebrated one of its best Olympic performances on Tuesday, while state media attempted to score political points from the golden haul won by its athletes at the Paris Games.

Team China racked up 40 gold medals in Paris, level with the United States, in their best performance at an overseas Olympics. However, it trailed its geopolitical rival in the overall medal count.

Some fans declared China the true winners, if medals won by the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong and self-ruled Taiwan were included.

“We are No. 1 out of sovereign countries,” read one comment with more than 1,300 likes on the X-like Weibo social media platform.

Many similar posts included images of an adjusted medal table with medals won by Hong Kong and Taiwan added to the Chinese total.

Hong Kong competes separately from the mainland while Taiwan, which China claims as its territory, takes part as Chinese Taipei.

China last beat the United States in the gold medal count in the Beijing Games in 2008.

State media outlet the Beijing Daily linked China’s Olympic success to broader national development.

China had wanted gold medals in the past to “prove to the world ‘we can do it’” but its athletes now have “confidence and vigor,” which it attributed to “the dual miracles of China’s rapid development and long-term social stability.”

A hashtag related to China’s historic medal count had gained 920 million views by Tuesday.

State news agency Xinhua posted an article on Monday that lauded China’s athletes for “spreading friendship and making friends.”

But it also praised them for resisting “malicious provocations,” a reference to the doping controversy that engulfed its swimmers before the Games.

The swimming team instead “used its strength to ‘slap down’ the foreign media’s continuous slander.”