China´s manned spacecraft Shenzhou-7 blasts off

NATIONAL PRIDE BOOST

As millions of Chinese glued their eyes to the live broadcast of the Shenzhou-7's launch, people in Inner Mongolia couldn't wait for its return.

"I am proud that the Shenzhou spacecraft will land near my home. I hope I could do something for it," herdsman Qi Qingtu said.

In 2005, the magnetic recorder, or "black box" of the Shenzhou-6, was first sighted by a herdswoman in Otog Banner in the autonomous region, which fell on the pasture just 1.5 kilometers away from her home.

World attention on China's leap forward in space boosted the nation's pride, as 13 journalists from 10 overseas media agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press covered Shenzhou-7's takeoff at Jiuquan on Thursday night, the first time China allowed overseas media to report at the launch site.

Senior CPC leaders Wu Bangguo, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang watched the launch at the BACC, while astronomic buffs took the chance to track and watch the spacecraft with telescopes and cameras.

"The launch shows how advanced our country's space technology is," said 65-year-old Zhang Jizhong in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan province, after watching television for about five hours.

For Chen Lin, a Beijing-based linguistic professor, the fact that foreign media increasingly referred to Chinese astronauts as "taikonauts", a term coined on the basis of the Chinese term "taikongren" (literally means spaceman in Chinese), was a signal of China's growing global influence.

"This shows that China is exerting more global influence in terms of its science and technology powers," said Chen. "The country has more to export to the world than just kungfu and Chinese food."

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Editor:Yang Jie