Prestige appears to be of overwhelming importance to the development of the manned space programme. In January, President Jiang Zemin hailed the launch of the Shenzou-IV spacecraft as a ‘great victory’.
A successful manned launch would clearly distance China from the space programmes of regional rivals such as Japan and India and demonstrate decisive technological prowess. For ordinary citizens, success in space would definitively mark the nation’s coming of age and move it clearly from third world to first world status, with developed nations forced to recognise this.
