China eager to catch US in space

---

With the Shenzhou VII mission set to attempt China's first spacewalk this weekend, the country's leaders are betting that their heavy investments in space exploration, in the process seeking to burnish the national image and build political capital abroad, will lead to big technological payoffs.
The three-day space mission, which launched on Thursday night, is China's third manned space mission since 2003. The country aims to land a person on the moon by 2020, 51 years after the United States first did so.
China's space program shares certain goals with its recently concluded Olympics campaign, said Michael Davis, a professor of international affairs at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. China's leaders are counting on such costly projects to bolster China's global image, stoking nationalist pride among its own population and helping the party maintain its legitimacy. Shoring up domestic political good will and bolstering China's recognition as a world power are "mutually reinforcing," he said.
When astronaut Yang Liwei entered the earth's orbit on Shenzhou V in 2003, China pried open the doors of an exclusive club of countries to send a person into orbit. The United States and Russia completed their first spacewalks in 1965.
There's an additional consideration that might be more enduring than national pride. "I think the leaders have sold [the space mission] as not only burnishing China's image but also as a tool for improving China's technological prowess," said Davis, adding that the United States has found economic and defense uses for technologies that developed out of its own space program.
The first glitch to occur with China's latest space mission had nothing to do with aeronautical know-how, though. Even before Shenzhou VII lifted off, a prominent media miscue detracted from the mission's prestige-building effort. State news agency Xinhua ran an article that appeared on its Web site describing the mission launch, featuring detailed dialogue among the astronauts, a day before it actually happened.
The error, which Xinhua called "technical," notwithstanding, Davis said he has observed less domestic criticism of the space program's costliness than of the Olympics' lavishness. Xinhua proclaims that the $4.4 million Chinese-made spacesuit that the astronauts are sporting is the "world's most expensive."
NASA head Michael Griffin testified before Congress last year that China may eventually pull ahead of the United States in the space race. "I admire what they have done, but I am concerned that it will leave the United States in its wake," he said, in making his case for the agency's budgetary allocation.
Yang Liwei has said that when China achieves its goal of building its first space station, it will also open up a space chapter of the Communist Party. —Forbes.com