Jintao vows to promote ties with N Korea
From Max Lee
The Daily Mail’s
Special Correspondent in Beijing

BEIJING—The Communist Party of China (CPC) will make continued efforts to promote the friendly relations and cooperation between China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to a new high, Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee said on Monday.
In a congratulatory message to Kim Jong-il, Hu’s DPRK counterpart, on the occasion of the 60th founding anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea (WPK), Hu said that to carry forward and further develop the traditional China-DPRK friendship embodies the common will of and serves the fundamental interests of the two parties, two countries and two peoples and is also conducive to maintaining peace and stability in the region.
Hu congratulated Kim and the WPK on the achievements made by the WPK and the DPRK people in economic development, promoting foreign relations and its endeavor to achieve peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula.
The CPC always cherishes the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK and has set it as a consistent policy to continuously strengthen and develop the China-DPRK friendship, Hu said.
In a congratulatory message to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il on the 60th founding anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea, Hu said he wanted to take cooperation to “a new high”, Xinhua news agency reported Monday.
“The Communist Party of China (CPC) will make continued efforts to promote the friendly relations and cooperation between China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to a new high,” he was cited as saying. He said the relationship served the fundamental interests of both sides and was “conducive to maintaining peace and stability in the region”.
“The CPC always cherishes the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK and has set it as a consistent policy to continuously strengthen and develop the China-DPRK friendship,” Hu said. Hu has dispatched Vice Premier Wu Yi and Commerce Minister Bo Xilai to the Stalinist state for the anniversary celebrations, but also to talk with Kim about the North’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
In announcing Wu’s visit last month, China’s foreign ministry said Beijing would like to see more progress in six-party talks on the issue. The latest round ended in Beijing last month with Pyongyang agreeing to a statement of principles on abandoning its atomic weapons in return for energy and security guarantees.

Shenzhou VI to begin space trip from 12th

From Max Lee
The Daily Mail’s
Special Correspondent in Beijing

BEIJING—China is expected to launch its second manned space mission on Wednesday from a remote desert region, swelling national pride and leaving many foreign observers in awe at what the country has achieved.
Shenzhou VI, a spaceship to carry two astronauts into orbit, sits atop of the LM-2F carrier rocket at the launching pad in Jiuquan satellite launch center in northwest China October 7, 2005. It is widely reported that China’s second manned spaceship will be launched on October 13.
The launch of Shenzhou VI has been shrouded in secrecy and is subject to weather conditions, but an official from the technical department of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center said it will happen on Wednesday.
“It is October 12 at 9 am,” the official, who refused to be named, told China Daily.
The China National Space Administration could not confirm the date. However, a travel agent taking domestic tourists to witness the launch said he had been advised to be at the site early Wednesday morning.
The six astronauts short listed for the two-member mission have arrived at the launch pad in Inner Mongolia, the China News Service said, citing engineers at the launch center.
China’s state-run press reported that Zhai Zhigang and Nie Haisheng would likely pilot the five-day mission.
It will be almost exactly two years after the successful October 15, 2003 launch of astronaut Yang Liwei into space, making China only the third nation after the United States and the former Soviet Union to accomplish such a feat.
“The Chinese should be very proud of what they are accomplishing,” said David Baker, a London-based space policy analyst for Jane’s Defence Weekly.
“It’s the kind of activity that only a developed and well-organized industrial nation can pull off”.
While the Shenzhou technology is based on 1950s and 1960s Soviet science, analysts said it would be wrong to shrug off China’s space program.
“If it was easy, China wouldn’t be the third country with a manned program,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on Chinas space program at the US Naval War College.
“The technology isn’t exactly breakthrough technology, but being able to put it all together and make it work, is sending a message that in fact China has integration skills, it has follow-through capability to build this kind of technology”.
The Shenzhou spacecraft, based on the robust and thoroughly tested Soviet design for the Soyuz vessel, is basically the same this time as two years ago.
It consists of three modules — the orbital module where scientific experiments are carried out; the re-entry capsule where the astronauts will spend most of their time; and the service module, which contains fuel and air, solar panels and other technical gear.
During his 21-hour trip to space in 2003, Yang never left the re-entry capsule, but this time will be different.
The two astronauts will enter into the orbital module in the front to conduct a large number of tests, presumably designed to check their physical reactions to conditions in space.
“This is very, very typical of the Chinese space program,” said Brian Harvey, the Dublin-based author of a book on China’s space endeavors. “They go quite a big step each time. They very rarely repeat missions”.
The data collected will be used for what is China’s objective for the medium term: a space station to promote cutting-edge scientific research in orbit and boost national pride on the ground.
China’s spending on its space program is a state secret, but what is clear is that by international standards it is a mere shoestring budget.
Harvey believes it is around six billion dollars — or approximately one sixth of the American expenditure.
Still, the question posed by many, is why Beijing is pushing on with its space program at all.
“The answer really lies in prestige first, direct economic and social applications second, and using the space program as a cutting-edge tool for technology third,” said Harvey.
As befitting a country proud to tout its 5,000-year history, China is not going into space just for short-term considerations.
“Much more than America, much more than Europe, China really does look at the very, very long-term view,” said Baker of Jane’s Defence Weekly.
“And it does see that in this century, and it may take the whole of this century, it wants to end up having options to exploit if there is a commercial purpose to mining lunar materials for instance”.