There have been various efforts to turn the tunnels to good uses. More than 3,700 hotels have been opened in tunnels around the country, according to the liberation Army Daily. Tunnels house morethan 13,000 warehouses (some of Wuhan's famous caves are now used to store bananas). Nearly 4,000 restaurants, shops or "recreation venues" have been carved out of others.
One warren in Shanghai is used as a karaoke club, in which the nooks and crannies provide plenty of privacy for hired hostesses and their customers while the passageways' twists and turns allow ample warning for those engaged in questionable activities if the police come to call.
In Beijing, for all the sweat that local residents or their grandparents expended to build the tunnels, few Chinese citizens are allowed into the underground complex.
Some of the tour guides say that local residents are not permitted into the tunnels because the network is considered a "military secret," though it is not clear why a military secret would be advertised to foreigners.
A woman who would identify herself only as Li, who works in the local civil defense administration, which manages the network, confirmed that Chinese citizens are not allowed in, saying mysteriously that military considerations are "part of the reason." But a bigger consideration, she said, is that "domestic travelers are not as cultured as overseas tourists."
"Strictly speaking," said Wang Mingqi, the district's director of civil defense and Li's boss, "few domestic travelers would be interested in the souvenirs they sell in the underground city and if we admit more groups, the cost of maintenance will go up.
China successfully launched unmanned Shenzhou, or ``Sacred Vessel,'' spacecraft on Long March rockets in 1999 and this year - pushing forward Chinese plans to join the United States and Russia as the only countries to have launched manned vessels.
While building its space programs, China is also concerned that space could become an expensive battleground in any future conflict. Beijing is especially unhappy with U.S. plans to build systems to shield the United States from missile attack.
``Some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space, not peacefully exploring,'' the China Daily quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry official Huang Huikang, who has worked with other nations' space programs, as saying. [End Excerpt]