By IPS Correspondents
BEIJING, Jan 8 2003 (IPS)

With China’s first manned flight in space looming large, the state propaganda machine has begun drumming up support for Beijing’s secretive space programme, lauding its scientific and patriotic significance and downplaying its budget.

With China’s first manned flight in space looming large, the state propaganda machine has begun drumming up support for Beijing’s secretive space programme, lauding its scientific and patriotic significance and downplaying its budget.

While details of China’s costly space programme are a closely guarded secret, this week state media declared that the country had managed to spend less on it than the United States, the second country after Russia to put a man in space.

”For the whole manned space industry, we have only spent 2.3 billion U.S. dollars, while the United States spent 8 billion dollars on just one rocket,” the ‘China Youth Daily’ newspaper quoted Zhang Qingwei, president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, as saying on Monday.

Zhang’s company is the main manufacturer of China’s space capsule ‘Shenzhou IV’, China’s fourth unmanned spacecraft that landed in the province of Inner Mongolia after a week in orbit Sunday.

The mission of the Shenzhou (Divine Vessel) was described by the English-language ‘China Daily’ as the ”final dress rehearsal” before China joins the former Soviet Union and the United States in becoming the third nation in the world to independently launch a human into space.

”Our country is now fully capable of sending manned craft into space,” read a headline in the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’, touching a nerve with the Chinese people who have dreamed for years of the day their country would reach up and explore the stars.

While it is as an enormous boost to national pride and the fulfillment of a long-time ambition, China’s sending of an astronaut into space is an extraordinarily expensive blueprint for a country still struggling to lift millions of poor people – estimates range from 42 to 106 million people – out of poverty.

Detractors who rarely dare criticise China’s prestigious space programme in public say it is in fact dominated by the military and drains state funds that could have been better used in other scientific fields than manned space flights.

To them, aiming for a manned space programme harks back to the Mao Zedong era (1949-76) when China tried to compete with space powers for military reasons.

Mao launched the space programme as well as a project to develop nuclear weapons in the belief that military supremacy was the only way China could compete with its ideological enemies.

While millions were dying of hunger during the great famine of 1959-61, China’s fledgling space programme received generous funding. This period culminated in the launch of the satellite named ‘East is Red Number One’ aboard the Long March rocket in 1971, at the height of the Cultural Revolution.

The pragmatic policies of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong’s successor, directed China’s space projects toward more direct scientific applications such as improving telecommunications and weather-forecasting satellites.

In 2001, China announced a civil space development programme, which outlined a blueprint for the country’s galactic conquest in the immediate five-year period and beyond.

The schedule announced is a bold one: it envisages a Chinese lunar outpost by 2005, a moon base in 2010 and an experimental factory and farm by 2020.

Both the blueprint and its timetable appear to be pure rhetoric intended to keep the flame of national pride in China’s space industry burning.

But significantly, a scholar closely involved with China’s space programme described a similar scenario of space walks, space docking and manned space station — all to e achieved within a very similar timeframe.

In the book ‘Academicians Envisioning the 21st Century’, Ouyang Ziyuan, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued that a moon base for China would be a great leap forward in national security, scientific progress and national unity.

Economic spin-offs were also cited – the moon could provide raw materials for exploration while its low gravity could be a viable launching pad for galactic travel, the book added.

On the weekend, a senior space administration official confirmed that after the successful launch of Shenzhou IV, China was going ahead with its manned space mission and its moon exploration project.

”The Lunar Exploration Programme is in the study phase and is awaiting government approval,” Guo Baozhu, vice administrator of the Chinese National Space Academy, told the Space Summit that opened Saturday at the Indian Science Congress in Bangalore.

Still, China has a long way to go before it can shoot for the moon.

The second half of this year might only see the country’s first ‘taikonaut’ in space. In 2001 however, China sent up a dog, a monkey, a rabbit, and snails on its Shenzhou rocket. Last year, it put a dummy on board a flight. And over the past decade, it has trained 14 astronauts, who will soon be ready to hoist a Chinese flag on the moon.

President Jiang Zemin, who is due to retire at the annual session of China’s national parliament in March, has an engineering background and sees China’s space programme as a symbol of the country’s march toward modernisation.

It is unclear whether in March Jiang would also relinquish his powerful post as chief-commander of the military, but before he does so he would like to make manned space flights a part of his legacy.

In building its space programmes, China is also concerned that space could become an expensive battleground in future conflicts. Beijing has time and again criticised Washington’s plans to build systems to shield the United States from missile attacks.

Last summer, Beijing announced it was planning to develop a spacecraft that could serve as a platform for space warfare.

Officials with the China Aerospace Corp. told the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ that it would take two to three decades for China to realise its plan, but that this timeframe would be shaped by the country’s national defence needs.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BEIJING, Jan 8 2003 (IPS)

With China’s first manned flight in space looming large, the state propaganda machine has begun drumming up support for Beijing’s secretive space programme, lauding its scientific and patriotic significance and downplaying its budget.

While details of China’s costly space programme are a closely guarded secret, this week state media declared that the country had managed to spend less on it than the United States, the second country after Russia to put a man in space.

"For the whole manned space industry, we have only spent 2.3 billion U.S. dollars, while the United States spent 8 billion dollars on just one rocket," the ‘China Youth Daily’ newspaper quoted Zhang Qingwei, president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, as saying on Monday.

Zhang’s company is the main manufacturer of China’s space capsule ‘Shenzhou IV’, China’s fourth unmanned spacecraft that landed in the province of Inner Mongolia after a week in orbit Sunday.

The mission of the Shenzhou (Divine Vessel) was described by the English-language ‘China Daily’ as the "final dress rehearsal" before China joins the former Soviet Union and the United States in becoming the third nation in the world to independently launch a human into space.

"Our country is now fully capable of sending manned craft into space," read a headline in the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’, touching a nerve with the Chinese people who have dreamed for years of the day their country would reach up and explore the stars.

While it is as an enormous boost to national pride and the fulfillment of a long-time ambition, China’s sending of an astronaut into space is an extraordinarily expensive blueprint for a country still struggling to lift millions of poor people – estimates range from 42 to 106 million people – out of poverty.

Detractors who rarely dare criticise China’s prestigious space programme in public say it is in fact dominated by the military and drains state funds that could have been better used in other scientific fields than manned space flights.

To them, aiming for a manned space programme harks back to the Mao Zedong era (1949-76) when China tried to compete with space powers for military reasons.

Mao launched the space programme as well as a project to develop nuclear weapons in the belief that military supremacy was the only way China could compete with its ideological enemies.

While millions were dying of hunger during the great famine of 1959-61, China’s fledgling space programme received generous funding. This period culminated in the launch of the satellite named ‘East is Red Number One’ aboard the Long March rocket in 1971, at the height of the Cultural Revolution.

The pragmatic policies of Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong’s successor, directed China’s space projects toward more direct scientific applications such as improving telecommunications and weather-forecasting satellites.

In 2001, China announced a civil space development programme, which outlined a blueprint for the country’s galactic conquest in the immediate five-year period and beyond.

The schedule announced is a bold one: it envisages a Chinese lunar outpost by 2005, a moon base in 2010 and an experimental factory and farm by 2020.

Both the blueprint and its timetable appear to be pure rhetoric intended to keep the flame of national pride in China’s space industry burning.

But significantly, a scholar closely involved with China’s space programme described a similar scenario of space walks, space docking and manned space station — all to e achieved within a very similar timeframe.

In the book ‘Academicians Envisioning the 21st Century’, Ouyang Ziyuan, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued that a moon base for China would be a great leap forward in national security, scientific progress and national unity.

Economic spin-offs were also cited – the moon could provide raw materials for exploration while its low gravity could be a viable launching pad for galactic travel, the book added.

On the weekend, a senior space administration official confirmed that after the successful launch of Shenzhou IV, China was going ahead with its manned space mission and its moon exploration project.

"The Lunar Exploration Programme is in the study phase and is awaiting government approval," Guo Baozhu, vice administrator of the Chinese National Space Academy, told the Space Summit that opened Saturday at the Indian Science Congress in Bangalore.

Still, China has a long way to go before it can shoot for the moon.

The second half of this year might only see the country’s first ‘taikonaut’ in space. In 2001 however, China sent up a dog, a monkey, a rabbit, and snails on its Shenzhou rocket. Last year, it put a dummy on board a flight. And over the past decade, it has trained 14 astronauts, who will soon be ready to hoist a Chinese flag on the moon.

President Jiang Zemin, who is due to retire at the annual session of China’s national parliament in March, has an engineering background and sees China’s space programme as a symbol of the country’s march toward modernisation.

It is unclear whether in March Jiang would also relinquish his powerful post as chief-commander of the military, but before he does so he would like to make manned space flights a part of his legacy.

In building its space programmes, China is also concerned that space could become an expensive battleground in future conflicts. Beijing has time and again criticised Washington’s plans to build systems to shield the United States from missile attacks.

Last summer, Beijing announced it was planning to develop a spacecraft that could serve as a platform for space warfare.

Officials with the China Aerospace Corp. told the ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ that it would take two to three decades for China to realise its plan, but that this timeframe would be shaped by the country’s national defence needs.

Excerpt: