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Back Issues
| China’s great leap skyward | | Print | |
| Nov/Dec 2008 | |||
 Willy Lam looks at the significance of China's first spacewalk.The epochal "spacewalk" undertaken by "Taikonaut" Zhai Zhigang in late September has marked a milestone in Chinese space and weapons technology. For Beijing, the stratospheric feat of the Shenzhou VII spaceship is in many ways a bigger cause than even the summer Olympics for celebrating the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party administration. It is true, of course, that American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts had done spacewalks as early as the mid-1960s. Yet Beijing's accession to the "space club" bears a significance that its neighbors will disregard at their peril. The speedy progress of the Chinese aeronautical program marks the rising clout of the so-called Hangtian Bang ("Space Faction") in the party, state and military establishment of the PRC. "...aeronautical know-how will help Chinese makers of missiles and other ‘Star Wars' weapons achieve a ‘great leap forward.'" One major reason why the Chinese have outstripped Asian competitors including Japan and India in this cutting-edge technology is the intimate ties - and unreserved sharing of resources - among a large number of civilian and military departments as well as government-owned companies. These include the Bureau of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (BOSTIND) which is under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT); the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutes of higher learning; the People's Liberation Army's General Logistics Department, Air Force and Second Artillery Corps (responsible for missiles), as well as a host of state controlled companies that turn out military and civilian hardware. Aeronautics and aviation-related companies include the mammoth China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), which manufactures the Shenzhou series of spaceships; its sister company, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC); and the newly set up Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd. (CACC), which is making China's first generation of wide-bodied commercial aircraft. The CASC, for example, can call upon the expertise of the labyrinthine research and development facilities maintained by the PLA, the MIIT and BOSTIND. Thus, while most Western estimates of the budget for China's space exploration are around US$2.5 billion a year, the financial and technological resources available to the aeronautical team are much bigger than this figure would suggest. By comparison, India's total aeronautical outlay is a relatively paltry US$1 billion a year. The knowledge about outer-space gleaned from the Shenzhou expeditions will be passed on to manufacturers of hardware including missiles, laser weapons, jetfighters and commercial aircraft. For the past few years, senior military advisers to the Central Military Commission, which is headed by President Hu Jintao, have stressed that an adequate grasp of aeronautical know-how will help Chinese makers of missiles and other "Star Wars" weapons achieve a "great leap forward." The CMC first indicated China's desire to join the "space arms race" by using a Chinesemade missile to knock down an orbiting weather satellite in January 2007. The hero's welcome accorded the three Shenzhou VII Taikonauts testify to the political clout enjoyed by the Space Faction, an elite group of military and civilian cadres and engineers involved in the space program. They are playing key roles in not only military industries but also civilian sectors relating to aircraft, shipbuilding, and electronics. Perhaps the biggest star in the Space Faction is Zhang Qingwei, CEO of CACC, which is dubbed "China's Boeing." Established earlier this year with a capital of US$2.7 billion, CACC is building the first generation of commercial jets. Zhang, 47, is a rocket scientist and a former general manager of CASC. He was minister of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence before this unit, now known as BOSTIND, was subsumed under the MIIT in March this year. The rocket whiz-kid became a full member of the CCP Central Committee - the country's most powerful organization - in 2002, when he was just 41. Another rising star is the current chief of CASC Ma Xingrui, 49, who is a member of the seven-man Commanding Group of the Shenzhen VII Project. Yet another prominent member of the Space Faction is Jiang Mianheng, 56, the eldest son of ex-president Jiang Zemin. A Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - China's foremost scientific research institute - the younger Jiang has a physics doctorate from an American university. Since the turn of the century, Jiang has been heavily involved with the Shenzhou spaceships, as well as the project to put a Taikonaut on the moon. While his profile has been lower in the wake of the retirement of his father from the Central Military Commission in 2004, Jiang has continued to be active in the militaryindustrial complex. The prominence of the "Space Faction," in addition to the frenetic degree of nationalism that the Shouzhou program's stellar exploits has aroused, means that the CCP leadership is in a much better position compared to the Indian or Japanese governments to pump more funds and brainpower into projecting China's power to the moon - and beyond. ■
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