China’s eighth manned space mission blasted off a few minutes after midnight on Saturday morning from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. 16.10.2021, Sputnik International
Coming Soon: China’s Space Station Hegemony
Commentary
By late April or early May, it’s expected that China will have started the construction of its first large space station. Given its importance to the larger ambitions of the regime in Beijing, it should be called Space Station Hegemony.
“China’s space station construction has come close to the implementation stage,” the Global Times reported on Jan. 14, citing the China Manned Space Engineering Office.
The Global Times also stated that “China will carry out 11 launches, including four manned spaceships and four cargo spaceship flights in the next two years, as it aims to complete the building of the country’s first space station by around 2022.”