CHINA:THREE CHINESE taikonauts returned safely to Earth yesterday after making the country's first space walk, the latest milestone in China's inexorable rise from developing nation to regional power.
There was a hero's welcome awaiting the men whose exploits captured the imagination here and inspired great feelings of pride as mission commander Zhai Zhigang waved the red flag during his 13-minute space walk. "The mission was glorious and full of challenges but the result was perfect. I feel proud of my country," Col Zhai (41) told a TV crew after Shenzhou VII touched down on the Inner Mongolian steppe.
Just like the Olympics in August, the space walk is a powerful symbol of how China has emerged as an Asian power and underlines its technological ambitions.
The mission has provided a welcome distraction for the Communist leadership from the tainted milk scandal, which has killed four infants and made tens of thousands sick.
"While tainted milk has cast the brand of China-made into international humiliation, a China-made Shenzhou VII spacecraft brought pride and glory to the country's 1.3 billion population," the Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.
China's first manned spaceflight was in 2003. A second, two-manned flight followed in 2005. The only other countries to have sent people into space are Russia and the US. The Shenzhou VII mission comes just three days before the US space agency Nasa's 50th anniversary.
The space walk has also been a triumph for the Communist Party, marking the latest highlight of 2008 for the leadership, which has staged a successful Olympics and successfully dealt with a devastating earthquake in Sichuan province. "On this flight, Chinese people's footprints will be left in space for the first time.
"This will give the world yet again something else to marvel about China in this extraordinary year of 2008," ran a separate Xinhua editorial.
However, the Chinese tendency to stage-manage the finest details led to an embarrassing moment in the run-up to the launch when Xinhua posted a story on Thursday morning, hours before Shenzhou VII was due to blast off, saying how the capsule was being successfully tracked over the Pacific Ocean.
The story, datelined on one of the tracking ships following the spacecraft from earth, had a September 27th dateline and even included dramatic quotes from the astronauts about how cabin and oxygen pressure were normal.
China's next target in space is to build a space station and it is planning to land a man on the moon in the next decade.