Three astronauts returned to a hero’s welcome yesterday. But in fact political and military bosses celebrate themselves and their leadership, announcing future conquests, forgetting the country’s many miseries.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China today is celebrating the three Shenzhou VII astronauts who returned from space and the country’s Olympic champions with homecoming parades, ceremonies and speeches watched by cheering crowds, starting a week-long celebration that includes 1 October, which marks the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

On Monday TV showed the three space heroes, with flower garlands around their neck, waving and smiling as they were slowly driven in open cars through a spiffed up Beijing in a joyful homecoming parade, with enthusiastic crowds along the route waving flags and carrying banners like those that decades ago welcomed US astronauts from their space adventures.

The mission, including the landing at 5:37 p.m. local time on the grasslands of China's northern Inner Mongolia region, was a “perfect success,” marking the end of the 68-hour endeavour.

China’s space programme is looking to launch a new orbiting vehicle and set up a space lab by 2011, said Wang Zhaoyao, deputy director of manned space flight. By 2020, the mainland wants to launch a manned mission to conduct research in space; perhaps even send a manned mission to the moon before NASA which is planning a return human mission to the moon by 2020.

China has relied heavily on home-grown technology, partly out of necessity. It has trouble obtaining space-related know-how abroad due to US and European bans on military-related technology and is not a participant in the International Space Station (although it would like to be), which includes the United States, Canada and the European Space Agency.

China’s space programme is run by the military and the latest mission is their success; all three astronauts are military officers and staunch Communist Party members.

“This mission's success is a milestone; a stride forward,” said Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Ahead of the 1 October ceremonies President Hu Jintao and Vice President Xi Jinping welcomed the country’s Olympic champions in the Great Hall of the People, praising what they said was China's realisation of a 100-year dream to host the games.

This “has . . . shown the world the great achievements of reform and opening and the building of socialist modernisation,” said Vice President Xi.

Indeed this year marks 30 years since the mainland started its economic reforms opening up to the outside world and its markets.

China's state media have stressed the fact that these successes are a direct result of the country’s economic boom.

They noted that the US$ 4.4 million, 120-kilogram (265-pound) suit called Feitian, or ‘flying the sky’ in Mandarin, was “made in China” from synthetic material so subtle that an astronaut can pick up a coin while wearing it—all the while offering protection from the harsh conditions of space

For the media the spacewalk also ups the ante in China's competition with aspiring Asian space powers Japan and India and will give it an edge to grab a bigger slice of the commercial satellite launching business. In fact this year China has already launched into space telecommunications satellites for Venezuela.

For the World Bank China is a model for other developing countries to follow, and Beijing often celebrates its supposedly equal partnership with African countries.

However, others point to this month’s many tragedies: melamine-laced milk, a collapsed mine waste reservoir in Shanxi province that killed hundreds of people, recurrent mining cave-ins.

They suggest that a forward-looking nation ought to go beyond technical successes and show instead respect for human beings

• china
• beijing
• shanxi
• olympics
• space
• programme
• astronauts
• walk
• feitian
• hu
• jintao
• xi
• jinping
• wen
• jiabao
• shenzhou
• vii
• 1
• october
• celebrations
• founding