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EVERY nation needs heroes. And China got two new ones in Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng when their Shenzhou VI capsule parachuted onto the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in the early hours of 17 October. Their five-day mission has become a bold statement of national pride, technological capability and intent to conquer space. And with a technologically savvy Japan and an emerging India both expanding their activities in space, there is much talk of a new space race in Asia.

But experts contacted by 91av see it differently. While the years ahead will see Asia becoming a force to be reckoned with in space, the efforts of the three main players are driven by different aims. If there is a race, the runners are heading off in different directions. Japan’s programme is tied into international partnerships, and is still recovering from budget squeezes and a spate of embarrassing technological failures. India, meanwhile, is pursuing its own path, stressing applications in remote sensing and telecommunications designed to aid development and to boost its fast-growing economy (see “No-nonsense eyes in the sky”).

Only China, experts say, has the combination of political will and technological might to support a programme that includes a prolonged human presence in space. If there is rivalry in the future, it will be with the US, as China vies to become a bona fide superpower. “China is the real long-term runner and leader of the pack,” says Brian Harvey, a space expert based in Dublin, Ireland, who has written widely on the Chinese, Japanese and Indian space programmes.

China has got to this stage by pursuing its space interests on a broad front. It has healthy initiatives in meteorology, other remote-sensing applications, and in telecommunications. It also operates a satellite navigation system known as Beidou, and is a partner in Europe’s Galileo project, designed to rival the American GPS satellites. And while most rocket programmes have suffered high-profile failures in recent years, the Chinese have since 1996 quietly accumulated an unbroken series of successful launches.

But it’s the vigorous promotion of human space flight that really separates China from other aspiring Asian space powers. Take the Shenzhou spacecraft. Often dismissed as a copy of the Russian Soyuz, the Shenzhou is in fact a more advanced craft. It is 13 per cent larger by volume, carries extra solar panels and generates more power than the Soyuz. And the Shenzhou can leave behind its orbital module, to function as a science lab in space.

Shenzhou’s capabilities augur a permanent Chinese presence in space. Shenzhou VII, expected to launch about a year from now, will feature the first Chinese space walk – an essential skill for bolting together modules in orbit. Shenzhou VIII is expected to leave behind a orbiting module that its successors will use to practise docking manoeuvres.

Soon afterwards, Harvey predicts that China will launch a modest space lab – a “baby-Mir” – weighing about 8 tonnes and capable of housing a crew of three for months. And in 2009, China is expected to fire the first of its heavy-lifting Long March 5 rockets, capable of launching 20 tonnes into low Earth orbit. “That could put up a Mir-class space station,” says Harvey, which might be ready for launch by 2010.

Behind all this is the most modern infrastructure of any space-faring nation, Harvey says. This includes the Shenzhou’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in north-west China, plus additional launch facilities at Xiching and Taiyuan. Mission controllers can maintain excellent links with their craft: China has built a state-of-the-art ground station in Namibia, and operates four ships bristling with telemetry equipment. “It’s all brand new,” says Harvey.

China’s space programme is often portrayed as being designed to impress the world. But its value in promoting a domestic feel-good factor should not be underestimated. Even China’s authoritarian rulers have to worry about keeping the country’s billion-strong population reasonably happy. “Just because there aren’t elections, doesn’t mean that there are no means for the population to express its displeasure,” says Dean Cheng, an expert on China’s space programme at the CNA Corporation, a think-tank in Alexandria, Virginia. China’s uneven economic development is storing up trouble for the government in Beijing. “There’s a lot of unrest out there among the have-nots,” he says. A successful space programme could paper over the cracks for a while.

For Japan, long accustomed to being Asia’s technological leader, China’s rapid advance is unsettling. “China and Japan are inevitably going to compete for leadership in the Asia-Pacific region, and space capabilities are part of that,” says John Logsdon, head of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington DC.

Public statements from Japan’s space agency, JAXA, suggest that Tokyo is concerned. The agency’s 20-year vision, unveiled earlier this year, contains telling and repeated references to China, specifically to China’s “first human space flight” and its ambitions for reaching the moon.

The JAXA plans include a manned space shuttle and a moonbase. But close examination of the fine print reveals little evidence that Japan really has the stomach for a space race with China. Key decisions on whether to aggressively pursue human space flight still lie a decade away, and would require a vastly bigger budget than allowed by the single-figure annual percentage increases being requested by JAXA.

In any case, JAXA has its hands full restoring dented pride after a series of high-profile failures. In 2003 alone, the agency lost the Mars probe Nozumi, the Earth observation satellite Midori-II, and was forced to destroy an advanced H-IIA rocket and its payload of two satellites in mid-flight, after a malfunction. The H-IIA was grounded until February this year as JAXA struggled to fix the problem on a tight budget. “They’re in recovery mode,” Logsdon says.

“The strongest reactions to China’s growing confidence in space come not from its Asian rivals but from Washington”

Surprisingly, the strongest reactions to China’s growing confidence in space come not from its Asian neighbours but from Washington. Even though China still lags a long way behind the formidable capacities of NASA and the US military, American politicians are determined not to give the Chinese a helping hand. China’s offer to participate in the International Space Station was flatly rebuffed by the US. And since the late 1990s, any operator wishing to have their satellite launched by a Chinese rocket has required explicit approval from the US government if the satellite contains any US components. This has effectively shut down China’s attempts to offer commercial launch services.

Also, US concerns about a military threat from China’s space activities reflect what observers say is an unwarranted degree of paranoia. For instance, the US Defense Intelligence Agency’s 2003 and 2004 reports on China’s military power referred to the development of a “parasitic microsatellite” that could lock onto rival military satellites and disrupt or destroy them on command. When this claim was investigated by the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC, it was traced to a privately run Chinese website of dubious repute. “Few people in the US intelligence community speak Chinese,” observes Jeffrey Lewis of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. “And that opens space for rumour and innuendo.”

Rumour and innuendo aside, with this latest flight China has made its intentions clear – definitely to Asia, and also to the rest of the world. Watch this space programme.