MORE THAN 40 years after the Soviet Union and the United States launched its first men into orbit, China has finally followed suit. And like the United States and the Soviet Union before it, China has drawn its first corps of space travelers from among the best fighter pilots its military has to offer.

Policy analysts here say they see the launch itself as something of a belated coup for a nation eager to build up its prestige on the world stage. Much like Beijing being picked to host the Olympic Games in 2008, one analyst said, the successful launch of Shenzhou 5 says to the world, “We have arrived.”

“The Chinese have long aspired to be a space power,” said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the Center for Naval Analysis here. “This is not some ‘Johnny come lately’ effort but a program that has consistently received support from the highest levels of Chinese government.”

FIRST STEP

The launch of Shenzhou 5, Cheng said, is the first step in a long-term Chinese space program that is to include a space shuttle, space station and aerospace planes that blur the distinction between launch vehicle and aircraft.

Although China is not exactly open about what it spends on space, Cheng estimates that the Chinese space program receives about $1.5 billion to $2 billion annually. That makes China’s space spending comparable to Japan’s and several times greater than that of cash-strapped Russia.

But it is a fairly modest budget, he said, compared with the $6 billion a year the European Space Agency spends and the $15.5 billion a year NASA gets. Unclassified U.S. military space programs command a further $8.5 billion a year in federal spending.

China’s entry into the exclusive club of spacefaring nations comes as the United States is questioning the value of human space flight in light of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy.

“This launch is an important achievement in the history of human exploration,” NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said Tuesday in a release. “The Chinese people have a long and distinguished history of exploration. NASA wishes China a continued safe human space flight program.”

O’Keefe, who is currently participating in a White House-led effort to hash out space policy issues in light of the Columbia accident, recently told reporters that China’s entrance into the human spaceflight arena, while historically significant, is not exactly a call to action for the United States.

HAWKS AREN’T HAWKISH

Even fervent China hawks are downplaying the strategic significance of the Shenzhou 5 launch and doubt it will prompt the same kind of reaction that Sputnik did 46 years ago.

At a Sept. 30 panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here, there was widespread agreement that China’s human spaceflight program does not warrant a direct response from the United States. Of greater concern, panelists said, are Chinese advances in the military use of outer space.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Stokes, a Chinese aerospace analyst at the Department of Defense, said China’s entry into the human spaceflight arena does not warrant a revamping of the U.S. human spaceflight program. However, Stokes said the Chinese human spaceflight program is part and parcel of the nation’s broader ambitions in space that have very clear implications for U.S. national security 10 to 20 years in the future.

He cited as a prime example Chinese strides in long-range ballistic missiles, a capability that, at least in the case of the United States and the Soviet Union, has gone hand in hand with the development of sophisticated space launch capabilities.