However, they cautioned it would be foolish to brush aside China's manned spaceflight because the country's highly-ambitious space program could yet come to rival any other at the rate it is developing.

"It's mostly prestige. It's not scientific. The scientific part has been pretty small," said Brian Harvey, Dublin-based author of The Chinese Space Programme.

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.

Chinese astronauts have trained in Russia and even the type of spacesuit they wear is a replica of the Russian suits, according to Western experts, although Beijing disputes this.

Most scientific experiments have been carried out in unmanned space flights including satellites, which China has been launching for years, and little has been accomplished scientifically with sending a man into space, said David Baker, editor of the British publication Jane's Space Directory.

"There's no science to it. The space science part is satellites, which don't catch the imagination that human space flight does," Baker said.

But he and other experts said with China's manned flight, the most populous country in the world is saying in the loudest possible way that it wants to become a major space power.

Keenly aware of the military, scientific and commercial benefits of gaining space know-how, China has been aggressively pursuing space exploration for decades and has taken great leaps forward.

It has launched communication satellites, reconnaisance satellites, and has been developing global positioning satellites, said Robert Karniol, the Asia-Pacific editor of Jane's Defense Weekly.

Communication satellites will significantly help China improve the command of its armed forces in a war, reconnaissance satellites provide imagery for military action to follow and global positioning satellites significantly improve the guidance system of missiles.

"On the military side, it provides capability for the People's Liberation Army that didn't exist," Karniol said.

Already, China's satellite launching capabilities are posing competition for the Americans and Europeans, as it has been lauching a lot of foreign satellites -- taking business from other space powers.

"The US sees a strengthening and emerging China getting more and more of the business which it would like to keep for itself," Baker said.

There is speculation that China plans to weaponize its space program -- meaning it will develop space-based weapons to destroy missiles or enemy satellites, Karniol said.

And what took the United States and the Soviet Union five to six years will take China much shorter time.

"China will go very rapidly from manned flight to the space station. Docking may take place on the third or fourth mission, a space walk on the fifth mission and space station may start to be assembled on the sixth," Harvey said.

"By the Olympics in 2008, there might be two space stations in orbit, the International Space Station and China's own space station."

James Oberg, who spent 22 years working at NASA Mission Control, predicted in a recent article for Scientific American that within a decade China's space activities may well surpass those of Russia and the European Space Agency.

"Although China is still far from challenging the space status of the US ... the burgeoning Chinese space program is already beginning to eclipse the European Space Agency," Oberg said.

Russia's space program faded in the 1990s.

SPACE.WIRE