The deputy chief of Russia's aerospace agency Rosaviakosmos Nikolai Moiseyev, was full of praise for the historic Chinese manned space mission, propelling China into the elite space club alongside Russia and the United States.

But he added with a hint of envy that China's space program was developing "in a rather dynamic way," pointing out that Beijing has set aside "over two billion dollars a year" to fund its space sector.

That is far more than cash-strapped Russia can afford to spend on its space industry, which will have to make do with some 12.5 billion rublesmillion dollars) next year.

"If our government goes on treating us like that, competition with China in space will come true," sighed one Russian expert, speaking on condition of anonymity at Baikonur where a new team is due to blast off Saturday for the International Space Station (ISS).

China Wednesday launched an astronaut into space aboard the Shenzhou V craft. Yang Liwei safely landed in north China's Inner Mongolia Thursday, following a 21-hour flight in which he orbited the earth 14 times.

China's spacecraft -- Shenzhou V or Divine Vessel V -- is a copy of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz, which the Soviets sent into space 36 years ago.

In August, Rosaviakosmos's director Yuri Koptev warned that Russia "risked being deprived of its scientific program" on the ISS unless financial problems were resolved.

"Space has become tripolar" the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily splashed on its front page, dismissing rumours that China had military ambitions in space but predicting the country could make serious advances.

"With its own manned program, China has a reasonable case to be admitted to the 16-nation ISS project, even if the Chinese haven't shown any interest in that," it said.

The Russian daily also pointed out that China had decided to take part in the European Union's Galileo satellite navigation system, a rival to the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS).

"It is too early to speak of real competition between Russia and China in space, but in some areas the Chinese had already attained a high level and are approaching us," expert Igor Lisov estimated.

"The Chinese make their own navigation, communications and spy satellites. They have many weather satellites, while Russia has only one," he stressed.

The decade following the Soviet Union's collapse, which had seen the space sector cut practically dry of financing, had left deep scars in Russia's space program, Lisov added.

Rosaviakosmos's Moiseyev took comfort nevertheless from the fact that China still needed to develop its manned mission program and build its own space station before it could compete with Russia -- and that was still a long way to go.

"The Chinese must first master the docking technology, organise group flights and launch big modules," Moiseyev said.

And Rosaviakosmos spokesman Sergei Gorbunov took a philosophical approach to the new Chinese push into space.

"There always was competition in space, there is now and so it will always be," he said.

SPACE.WIRE