China takes off to space station for communist party anniversary

Three Chinese comrades have been blasted into space to mark the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th birthday and further Xi Jinping’s extraterrestrial ambitions.

The manned Shenzhou-12 spacecraft takes off from the Gobi Desert on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

Three Chinese comrades were blasted from the Gobi Desert to China’s new space station on Thursday for the country’s longest crewed mission timed for the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th birthday celebration.

State media presented the three-month mission as a landmark step in Beijing’s journey to becoming a major space power and as a centrepiece of the party’s centenary celebrations, which start on July 1.

At a ceremony before blast-off, the three astronauts – who the Global Times reported were all party members – greeted a crowd of supporters and space workers, who sang the Mao-era song “Without the Chinese Communist Party, there would be no new China”.

“It feels great,” said crew commander Nie Haisheng, 56, after reaching near-Earth orbit on Thursday morning as the journey was broadcast on China’s state television.

At an event held hours before take-off at the Jiuquan launch centre, the rocket’s veteran captain said the mission would add “a heroic chapter to the 100-year history of struggle of the (Chinese Communist) party.”

“China’s space exploration ­development has crystallised the Chinese people’s thousand-year dream of flying to the sky,” he said.

Celebrations for the party’s centenary are reaching fever pitch in Xi Jinping’s China.

In recent days fighter jets have flown over Beijing in the shape of the numbers 1-0-0, in practice for the July 1 parade.

Newspapers are filled with ­stories marking the party’s “Path to Glory”, while TV runs dramas meant to teach young Chinese about revolutionary history.

And last week the 11 million students sitting China’s highly competitive university entrance exam – called the Gaokao – were asked to write a patriotic essay about the “spiritual nourishment and inspiration” they have drawn from the party’s 100-year history.

Thursday’s rocket launch took those celebrations into space, as the crew set off to conduct work on China’s work-in-progress space station Tiangong, which means Heavenly Palace.

The Shenzhou-12 mission is the latest stage in China’s ambitious plans to be the only country to own and run its own space station. China was forced to go it alone after America refused its ­request to be involved in the International Space Station, which is backed by the US, Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan.

Beijing has spent billions on its military-run space program and plans to have a permanently crewed space station by next year.

Mr Xi has made space exploration a key priority, calling it an “important part of the dream of a powerful country”.

“The level of space technology is an important indicator of a country‘s economic strength, comprehensive national strength, and national defence strength,” Mr Xi has said.

This week, Russia and China unveiled a road map for a joint international lunar research station. Marco Aliberti, a resident fellow at the European Space Policy Institute in Austria, said the ­Chinese-Russian development revealed a major split.

“(It) signals the progressive ­bifurcation of the international space community around two contending – and potentially conflicting – pathways for future lunar exploration activities,” he said.