It retires, but the journey continues

ACCORDING TO AN OFFICIAL press release, China’s Tiangong II space lab will reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Friday, which marks its official retirement. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

Tiangong II is being retired from service. However, China’s age of space exploration has just begun. Construction of its space station, based on the efforts of generations of scientists and engineers, is still going on with the first module due to be launched some time next year.

The launch of China’s Tiangong I and Tiangong II space labs shows that China is closing the gap with the US and Russia in terms of space technology. The technology of space station is so advanced that only the US and Russia can boast of owning the comprehensive technology of manufacturing, launching, and operating space stations. In comparison, Japan, Canada and the European Union only have part of the technology and they mainly co-work with the US on space programs.

The importance of a space station and space lab to astronautics can never be overestimated, as they provide a base in the space where astronauts can stay and provide data about the effects of space travel on the human body.

Tiangong II is 10.4 meters long with a maximum width of 3.35 meters, and weighs 8.6 metric tons. In late 2016, it hosted two Chinese astronauts for 30 days in what was China’s longest manned space mission so far.

Just like Shi Hao, a scientist with the space mission engineering program at the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, said, the Tiangong series of spacecraft mark the start of China’s space exploration. There is still a long journey ahead, as it continues its contributions to earthlings’ efforts to explore the universe.

China’s space station, Tianhe is expected to be completed around 2022. It will be capable of hosting three astronauts for long durations and up to six during a change of astronauts. It is due to have two experiment modules and will be accompanied by a co-orbiting space telescope that can dock for maintenance and repairs.

In China, some people joke that houses are for speculation, and the stock market is for living in. Although it is absurd, it does point to the close connection of the stock and housing markets. About 30 percent of China’s population is considered middle-income. But most of their wealth exists in forms of houses.

An important reason that the Chinese stock market remains weak is that the people lack confidence in the future, so they don’t want to invest in the real economy. Since 2008, houses have proved to be the most reliable hard currency in the country helping common citizens to minimize inflation’s attenuating effects on their wealth.

The low profitability of the private sector — it is even lower than bank deposit interest rate in some industries — is another reason making the investors hesitant. The Stateowned enterprises monopolize too much market space which should have been a stage for market competition among private companies, which naturally forces capital to flow elsewhere.

The fall of private companies directly reduces the government’s tax revenue, which affects its investment in the SOEs and public services.

This is a vicious cycle, and reform is the only solution to break it and stabilize the economic growth within a rational range.

China is still in a stage when it must focus on making the cake bigger, instead of how to divide it fairly. Even if the economy can maintain its current growth rate, China’s per capita GDP will still be markedly below even its neighbors, such as the Republic of Korea and Singapore, by 2035.

In the process of catching up, Beijing should always keep a balance between improving its public services and boosting the economic growth through playing up the government’s role in the former and the market’s role in the latter — it is the other way round at present.

It is more difficult and slower for a developing country to increase its per capita income above the threshold of developed economies, but it is very easy and fast for the economy of even a developed country to fall into recession. The foremost challenge does not arise from the outside but from some long-term internal problems.

Deepening reform should no longer be a slogan but incur concrete actions — most of which will be painful to vested interests — to fill people, particularly the talents who can make the cake bigger, with confidence about the future. If emigration becomes a popular choice among the cake makers, China will only repeat its old path in a new era.

JIN DING / CHINA DAILY