Long Yuehao made the proposal only weeks after the Shenzhou II spacecraft completed the second unmanned test flight of China's fledgling effort to put a Chinese astronaut into space, Xinhua news agency reported.

Long, director of the Science and Technology Commission of the Chinese Academy of Carrier Rockets, made the proposal at a Beijing forum on China's space technology, the report said.

His comments came after Western space observers had speculated the Shenzhou II encountered critical systems failures in its re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

China has yet to publicize a mission report on the six-day flight that was launched on January 9 and which orbited the earth 108 times.

The news blackout has greatly contrasted with the public fanfare for both the launch of the craft and the in-depth reports of the return to earth of Shenzhou I in November 1999.

China's three existing launch centers, tucked into difficult-to-access landlocked regions "are undesirable in terms of safety in flight regions, difficult to access by larger carrier rockets if transported by rail and sometimes make it difficult for the military to keep secrets when using sites," Long said.

A launching center in Hainan would solve all these problems, Long said, while making it easier for experts to find "touchdown points" in coastal regions.

Western observers have speculated for weeks that retro-rockets on the Shenzhou II re-entry vehicle could have misfired or that its parachutes only partially deployed on re-entry sending the vehicle smashing into the deserts of Inner Mongolia.

The extremely cold conditions of Inner Mongolia could also have hampered a successful landing and recovery of the craft, they said.

However, Zhang Xiaodong, a spokesman for China Aerospace Science and Technological Consortium (CASTC) told AFP last week that nothing went wrong with the Shenzhou II mission.

"Shenzhou II is already in Beijing ... but I don't know anything about the specifics of the re-entry of the spacecraft," he said.

Long further proposed that China build a more reliable and more cost-effective carrier rocket to launch proposed manned space flights, future satellites and China's proposed space station, Xinhua said.

"China is capable of producing the first of such rockets in about six years on the basis of the technology available and with necessary funding," he said.

Meanwhile, Xu Fuxiang, president of the Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST), reiterated China's goal of sending a man in space and revealed that his academy would develop several spacecraft in the next five years in order to fulfill the plan, Xinhua said in a separate report.

China expects to reach this stage "in the next few years," said Hu Hongfu, deputy general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, China's space administrative body.

"A number of unmanned flights are necessary before manned flights take place, for the sake of the safety of Chinese astronauts," he said.

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