In the middle of the aerospace city is the highly secretive Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center (BACCC) - the decision-making nerve center of China's spaceflight testing. When Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee was taken on a brief tour during his visit to China at the end of May, it was projected as a major confidence-building measure on China's part.

Normally, the BACCC is strictly off-limits to the media. However, a trip organized for foreign correspondents gave a rare opportunity for a glimpse into China's space development, which has been in the international limelight since Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut to travel in space aboard the Shenzhou V spacecraft in October 2003.

Spaceflight command and control is an enormous two-gallery room that would be the perfect movie set for a Hollywood extravaganza like Apollo 13, were it not the real thing. Four large, luminous split screens dominate the room. The two screens in the center display a map of the world against which the trajectory of a spacecraft is tracked. The others present a snapshot of the inside of any spacecraft that may be in orbit.

It is from this room that all Shenzhou spaceships were tracked and controlled with the help of four "Yuanwang" aerospace survey ships stationed in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

Rows of monitors with shiny, multi-colored buttons adorn the consoles from where a tense ground-control crew observe the entire journey of the craft from liftoff to touchdown.

Zhang Shegyuan, deputy director of the BACCC, said the first six Shenzhou spacecraft cost a total of 19 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion). Though this is only a fraction of what the United States spends on its space program every year (its National Aeronautics and Space Administration has a proposed budget of $7 billion for 2007 alone), nonetheless there have been criticisms that such a program is a luxury for a developing country where tens of millions of people still live below the poverty line.

Zhang insists $2.3 billion is a modest sum. While this answer might appear surprising given that the average per capita annual income of the country is still only a little over $1,000, for China the space program is a source of national pride and international prestige, conferring on the country a status that transcends price tags.

After the launch of the Shenzhou V space mission, China became only the third country in the world to send a manned spacecraft into orbit, behind the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia.

When congratulating the staff of the BACCC after the hitch-free launch and return of the Shenzhou VI mission last October, Wu Banguao, chairman of the National People's Congress, said, "The successful mission is of great significance for elevating China's prestige in the world and promoting China's economic, scientific and national defense capabilities as well as its national cohesiveness."

Underscoring the techno-nationalism that imbues China's space program, Zhang attributes the success of the six Shenzhou missions thus far to the fact the astronauts and other members of the mission teams are "patriotic to their motherland".

Yang Liwei, an astronaut who is today one of China's biggest celebrities, was also on hand to answer questions at the aerospace city's "astronaut research and training center". Framed by a gigantic spacecraft simulator, Yang said space research was "the common task of humanity" and highlighted the fact he had carried a United Nations flag with him on Shenzhou V.

But despite China's calls for greater international cooperation in space development and insistence that its own program is intended for peaceful, scientific research, some countries, notably the US, remain suspicious that China's space capabilities are intended for military purposes.

Thus, though China has expressed interest in joining the International Space Station project, which involves Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan, the Pentagon has opposed cooperation with Beijing, claiming China's space program is a potential threat to the US satellite system, which underpins US military power.

Regardless of US suspicions, China says it is on track to achieve its goals of a space walk by 2008, docking of flight vehicles in orbit by 2012 and a manned spaced nation not long after that.

Chinese media recently reported that the country's first lunar orbiter, named "Chang'e I", is on schedule for launch in 2007. The moon-orbiting project is the first step in China's larger lunar exploration program that went into operation in 2004. The orbiter is expected to be followed by a remote-controlled lunar rover that will perform experiments and send data back to Earth. In the third phase, a module will drill out a chunk of the moon and bring it back for analysis.

The professed aim is to have all three phases complete by 2017, when a manned lunar-probe mission will be considered.

It's an ambitious program, but China is not alone in thinking big on space. In China's immediate neighborhood, India and Japan are also planning an eventful decade of space exploration. India will by 2008 launch Chandranarayaan-1, a robotic spaceship headed for the moon. In Japan, robotic probe SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) is also slated to visit the moon before 2010. Space exploration is certain to expand beyond the exclusive club of countries that have dominated it thus far. In the "space race" of the 1960s when US rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was asked what he expected to find on the moon, he jokingly replied, "Russians."

Today his answer would probably have been, "Chinese, Indians and Japanese."

Pallavi Aiyar is the China correspondent for The Hindu.