Even for me, an Australian national who has spent a third of my life in Taiwan and none of it on the mainland, watching the media frenzy surrounding Yang Liwei's successful space flight was a source of immense pride. At lunch with friends the other day, I daydreamed aloud about being in space one day, and my friends responded with: 'You want to work for Nasa?'
Hardly. 'My people have got their own space programme now,' I replied.
Such is the innate bond between Chinese of all nationalities, and the result is overflowing pride when one man takes that great leap for mankind. But as China glows in the success of its fledgling space programme, we must not forget its liabilities, too.
As thrilling as it is to see a man of your own ethnicity soar into space, there should also be something disturbing about watching a nation spend billions of yuan on such projects when it is strapped for resources to support the world's largest population.
I do not doubt that national pride can indeed boost a nation's will and, thereby, its production. But while Colonel Yang is being placed on a pedestal, let us not forget the hundreds of millions being hidden from the world to avoid the appearance that China is not hot on the heels of the United States.
The truth is that China is not just a few paces behind, it is more like a few extraterrestrial orbits away. China's space programme itself is an obvious indicator of the enormous gap. After all, the Americans sent a man into orbit 41 years ago - and they were not even the first.
But the greatest indicator of how far China has to go is about as far removed from the Shenzhou V mission as you can get. It is in the deserts of China. In the mountain ranges. On the dried-up farmlands. In the urban ghettos and the rural slums. It is no secret that there are a lot of poor people in China. We just forget, in such glorious times, that the huge, poverty-stricken population needs as much help as Colonel Yang needed to get off the ground safely.
