BEIJING - As they prepare to host the Summer Olympics, the Chinese are extraordinarily satisfied with their nation's economic growth and the way things are going for their country, chalking up much higher levels of contentment than earlier in the decade, a survey released Tuesday showed.

The Chinese also think that the Aug. 8-24 Summer Games will help improve the way their nation is viewed around the world, the Pew Global Attitudes survey found.

The survey, conducted among 3,212 adults in China in late March and early April, found the Chinese to be less satisfied with their personal lives than with the country's direction. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The Chinese worry about rising prices, the gap between rich and poor, corruption among officials and air pollution, the survey found.

Even with those concerns, the Chinese have embraced the nation's transition from a socialist to a capitalist society, with seven in 10 people saying that it has made them better off, the Pew survey found.

Nearly six in 10 Chinese think their country will replace or already has replaced the United States as the world's dominant superpower.

The Olympic Games have put Chinese in a buoyant mood.

More than nine out of 10 Chinese think the games will be a success, and most view their Olympic team as ready to harvest a lot of medals, the survey found.

Three out of four Chinese expect their team to win the most medals in the Summer Olympics. Only 15 percent think that the U.S. team will take the most medals.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, China came in third in the medal count with 63, behind the United States (103) and Russia (92).