Manned flight: Space mission shows China’s strength

BEIJING: Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo said on Sunday that the current manned space program demonstrated the country’s ever-growing strength. “We can proudly say that the program has become a key indicator of the prosperous development of socialism with Chinese characteristics”, said Wu while greeting representatives of the ground crew of the mission. The Shenzhou-9 spaceship was successfully launched on Saturday and is scheduled to conduct the country’s first manned space docking with space lab module Tiangong-1 on Monday. The mission is important for the second part of China’s three-step manned space mission and will have profound influences, said Wu, chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2012.