China's First Taikonaut Gets a Promotion - media blitz highlights math skill

BEIJING (AP) -- The fighter pilot who made China's first trip into space last week has been promoted, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday amid efforts by the communist government to make Lt. Col. Yang Liwei a national hero.

Yang's promotion to full colonel was approved several weeks ago, but his superiors did not tell him until after he returned Thursday from his 21 1/2-hour space flight, Xinhua said.

"The promotion decision was made for his excellent performance as a member of the team during recent years," the agency said.

However, it said, "His superiors decided not to inform Yang of the decision as they thought it might affect his mood as the manned space mission was approaching."

Yang's identity was not disclosed by the secretive, military-linked space program until after his Shenzhou 5 capsule blasted off Wednesday from a base in China's desert northweBut since then, he has been the subject of intense publicity by the communist government's propaganda machine, which lauds him on television and in newspapers as a symbol of the successes of China's military and ruling party.

Yang, 38, was flown back to Beijing hours after his touchdown Thursday in China's northern grasslands, though there has been no sign yet when he might appear in public.

State television has repeatedly shown scenes of Yang in training, working in his space capsule and talking to his wife and 8-year-old son from orbit.

"Yang had a happy and tranquil childhood," Xinhua said. "He was intelligent as a child and a good team leader of his playmates, his parents recalled. Yang won many prizes in math competitions."

The report said Yang was a straight-A student at military college after joining the air force of the People's Liberation Army in 1983. It said that after becoming a fighter pilot, he "rated the elite" of his military division.

Yang was one of three finalists for the space flight. They were part of a 14-member astronaut corps, picked from among 1,500 military pilots.

Su Shuangning, director-general of the astronaut program, described Yang as sober-minded and with a "superb capability for self-control," Xinhua said.

Also Monday, Xinhua added to disclosures by the newly confident space program about its technology, reporting that Yang was aided by an "electronic secretary" with an artificial voice.

The machine recorded the speed, altitude and other data about Yang's flight and could give "short, clear ... mezzo-soprano voice instructions" if anything was out of the ordinary, Xinhua said. It did not say whether Yang received any such alerts in flight.

Space program officials said last week that China intends to launch its next Shenzhou flight within two years and plans eventually to have a permanently manned space station.

"Yang had a happy and tranquil childhood," Xinhua said. "He was intelligent as a child and a good team leader of his playmates, his parents recalled. Yang won many prizes in math competitions."

In other words, students, if you study hard, you too can be a hero and fly in space. The Chinese media blitz is meant to spur nationalism and excellence in studies. This is exactly what our leaders need to hear. When we do exciting things in space, students will work to excel in their studies. Right now NASA spends money trying to convince students how exciting space is. It looks a bit like, when you can't do, you teach.

Where are our heroes? Where is our inspiration? NASA depends on Russia to fly our astronauts. Shameful. Where is our space program? What is the GOAL? It's time to return to the Moon and learn to live and work off planet. When we have that goal we again will have the right stuff. Searching for life isn't going to make it happen, national security and economic concerns will.

Will the Space Race Move East?***If China is able to meet these goals, or even make reasonable progress toward them, it will have proved that its membership in the "space club" is no fluke. China's efforts to put a man into space, the Pentagon said in a report last August, "almost certainly will contribute to improved military space systems in the 2010-2020 time frame."

Beijing's foray into space should not come as a surprise. As the Soviet Union's pioneering example teaches, Communist governments are willing to invest heavily in assets that can be centrally controlled. In the autocrat's calculus, rocketing a man into orbit is less risky than sending a pilot up in an armed fighter or bomber plane, because while a pilot might defect or turn his weapons toward home, an astronaut has little to no control over the vessel in which he travels.

The Chinese government's obsession with control extends beyond the mission itself: it also limits information about the program. Can anyone imagine the United States government training 14 astronauts over at least five years and not identifying the lone voyager until the week of his launching? What would be the outcry if NASA misled the country about where the spacecraft would land, disclosing the true location of the site only shortly before its first use?

The contrast is stark between the relatively open space program of the United States - it is cooperating with 15 countries on the International Space Station - and China's clandestine approach.

Sending a man into space is a notable achievement. But this feat should not obscure the important political differences that continue to divide China from the United States. Amid calls for joint scientific or commercial ventures in space to improve Chinese-American relations, officials in Washington should consider what kind of cooperation is appropriate with a regime that does not share the United States' tradition of freedom and respect for human rights.***

You're right. One of the major things the Dems have succeed in is destroying any real heros. They represent too much of what makes American culture great, and are politically incorrect as well. Achievement through hard worked? Can't have it. Love of God and Country? What are you thinking? Worked hard through school and achieved greatness through devotion to their dreams? Yeah, right! Doesn't suit the leftist agenda... aint gonna happen or at least you're not gonna hear about it!

I'd hate for our children to have to be left thinking: "Maybe some day I'll grow up to be a Communist slave and achieve great things for the Motherland..."

Although the thought suits her just fine...

"That's President Clinton. Screw it up and I'll have your kneecaps broken..."

You also forgot that "Yang" or "Yong" or whatever his name is- ( He's no Armstrong,Glenn ,or even a McNair!) was probably raised in a party bosses' home or a "priviledged" commie family with all the "opportunities" provided for in a "Communist workers paradise" ( Gee-I bet he sure didn't grow up in poorly educated, peasant,shoe factory worker stock, unlike the working class families many of our astronauts came from)."Dear Wife", our space exploration system is still strong and its only mutual peaceful reasons why we even give MONEY to Russia to help keep their program afloat( The French get a few bucks and some support for their Guyana based space program too).Let the Chinese lie, cheat,fake,steal and do whatever they do to try to emulate a "real super power" ( if only the Brits were as strong as they were at the turn of the 20th century,they'd slap the Red Chinese stupid just for the fun of it!)

I wish them luck in their wasteful space endeavors, instead of trying to "thrown in" with the US/UK/CIS(Ruskies)/France/India and Japan to share costs and technical help and global cooperation that kind of effort brings.Instead They'll do the usual mindless "worker ant" mentality "thing"- that is, keep over spending,do shoddy workmanship and planning,waste efforts, kill pilots/astronauts(hopefully none of their future space junk kills the residents of the "freeworld" when it fails and falls to earth) and continue to oppress /starve their own people for a "sick fantasy" (ever hear about the "cultural revolution" ?)

been busy,so sorry I didn't post lately.No, I don't underestimate the Red Chinese- they "suck" period . If the Taiwanese went to War with them tomorrow, I'd cheer for Taiwan and would expect a bloddy but technical/tactical victory from the smaller Taiwanese forces. The Main landers are a parasites on the western world economy;they're Gov't curses us and all the while they dump cheap slave labor products on us and beg/demand our trade with them. I look first and try diligently not to buy "made in China".America is still on the fore front of the modern world and,like the ancient Romans, its gonna' be a LOOONNNNGGGG time before the "barbarians" knock these walls down.China is the last major nation threatening world peace(they're building more and more advanced nuclear weapons systems while we and the Russians cut back on the earth killing devices.The Chinese still want aircraft carriers to project global power(for what?nobody threatens them, except for their "perverse" fear of the U.S. which is a mirror image of the growing hostility between the U.S. and Imperial Japan,circa 1940) .We may well enter a cold war again with the chinese, and like the Russian Bears' demise in '90, we'll still come out on top in the 21st century.......

We may well enter a cold war again with the chinese, and like the Russian Bears' demise in '90, we'll still come out on top in the 21st century.......

***Is there anything we can do about all this? One thing only. We must understand clearly that there will be lasting peace in East Asia when, and only when, China abandons her atavistic fantasies of imperial hegemony, withdraws her armies from the 2 million square miles of other people's territory they currently occupy, and gets herself a democratic government under a rule of law. Until that day comes, if it ever does, the danger of war will be a constant in relations between China and the world beyond the Wall, as recent events in the South China Sea have illustrated. Free nations, under the indispensable leadership of the United States, must in the meantime struggle to maintain peace, using the one, single, and only method that wretched humanity, in all its millennia of experience, has so far been able to devise for that purpose: Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. *** Source

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