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China defends space program as peaceful
2007-12-04
China's space program will maintain steady long-term growth to serve strategic national interests, but it is peaceful in nature and costs just a fraction of NASA's spending, a senior official said on Tuesday. China launched its first lunar probe in October, the latest feat in an ambitious space program seeking scientific and military benefits as well as domestic political gains from its boost to patriotism. But some critics have questioned the ruling Communist Party's eagerness to clamber into the select ranks of global space powers even as hundreds of millions of Chinese struggle in rural hardship. "China's space cause always serves the overall national development strategy and needs," Chen Qiufa, vice minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, told an online chat on the government Web site (www.gov.cn). "It will keep up stable growth in the long run." But China would stick to a principle of peaceful exploitation of space and would not engage in a space arms race. "Our lunar probe this time has no military purposes and the satellite does not carry any military device," he said of the Chang'e 1 orbiter, named after a legendary goddess. Chen said the cost of China's program was a fraction of spending by other space powers. "China's basic task as a developing nation is to develop the economy and benefit the people," Chen said. "Our investment in the space cause is small in terms of both its sheer scale and its proportion in the economy." Chen gave no specific figures, but he said annual investment in the space program was less then 10 percent of the amount the United States spent. The 1.4 billion yuan ($189 million) China had spent on the Chang'e project so far was also low compared with Japan's investment of $480 million for its lunar probe, Chen said. Top scientists who attended the online chat again dismissed Internet gossip that the first lunar photo taken by Chang'e 1 might have been faked from NASA. "The photo is the result of the hard work of more than 17,000 people over four years," said Luan Enjie, chief commander of the Chang'e project. "I hope Chinese compatriots can respect our work." In 2003, China became only the third country to put a man into space using its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI mission in October 2005. China plans to launch a third manned mission, Shenzhou VII, next year involving a space walk, and it will mount a joint effort with Russia to explore Mars in 2009. ($1=7.401 Yuan) (Reporting by Guo Shipeng; editing by Nick Macfie and Roger Crabb)
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