China has said it will join Russia and the United States as the only nations to put a man in space before the end of the year.

According to Chinese sources quoted by Hong Kong media, the blastoff of China's Shenzhou V rocket will come after a key Communist Party meeting in Beijing in mid-October.

It will be the fifth flight in the Shenzhou ("Divine Vessel") program, which started in 1992.

In military applications, the Shenzhou program has "a fairly limited utility," said Dean Chen, a senior analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis research group, a private US group.

"The primary considerations are prestige and economics," Chen said, likening the move to Beijing hosting the Olympic Games in 2008.

"It's a coming-out party. It says to the world that we have arrived, we are now an advanced nation."

As for the economic dividends, "it is conceivable that the Chinese are hoping that a successful manned launch will suggest that its reliability is sufficient to risk millions of dollars on satellite launches," in a bid to win over potential clients who lack confidence in China's space program, Chen said.

Colonel Mark Stokes, Taiwan director at the US Defense Department's China section, said such success would be "the first step of a long program."

"It is significant, it is a stepping stone," he said.

He noted that the program "poses no direct threat (to the United States)" but acknowledged that it "makes China a player."

"I think it does give them better surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities if they can get a good space program, and a manned program provides more improvements," said Larry Wortzel, a China expert for the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

China was the fifth country to launch a satellite, according to Chen.

"The Chinese received a major boost when the Soviet Union collapsed" and Russia became willing from 1994 to sell its space expertise to China, Chen noted.

Russian officials have also emphasized the help they have given to China.

According to Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, the two Chinese cosmonauts who are ready to make the first flight trained at Russia's Star City base in the late 1990s while the Russian firm RKK Energiya helped Beijing with technology.

"The Chinese craft even resembles the Soyuz," Gorbunov said Wednesday.

Chen also said that the Shenzhou and Soyuz rockets "bear a superficial similarity."

"Both are composed of three separate modules -- an orbital module containing payloads, a desat module for the crew and a service module for the propulsion systems."

But "on closer examination, Shenzhou is quite different from the Soyuz," Chen said.

"It is larger (weighing half a tonne), longer and wider; the Shenzhou has more solar panels; it generates enough power to be equal to the entire Mir space station -- three times that of an individual Soyuz; (and) it gives it longer endurance."

In addition, Chen added, "the orbital module is apparently capable of autonomous flight, which makes it different again from the Soyuz.

"The combination of its own power and propulsion would make the orbital module a potential building block for a Chinese Skylab or Mir," he said.

SPACE.WIRE