The world media Wednesday highly evaluated China's successful launch of the manned Shenzhou-5 spacecraft.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said the flight unveils an aerospace era for China and also ushers in a multipolar era of aerospace exploration by the international community.

It shows China's scientific and technological strength, the excellence of the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialism with Chinese characteristics.

India's Hindustan Times said the success would boost the patriotism in China, and increase the possibility of future aerospace tourism in China and landing on the moon by Chinese astronauts.

Italy's La Republica said the manned Shenzhou-5 spaceship is expect to return to the ground on Oct. 16, which is of symbolic significance because China's first atom bomb was successfully detonated on the same day 39 years ago. The successful launch will make China a powerful competitor in the aerospace field, it added.

Finland's TV station said that the successful launch of the manned Shenzhou-5 spaceship makes China the third country, following the former Soviet Union and the United States, to send human beings into space, and that it is of great political and economic significance to China.

The Czech Republic's newspaper, Lidove Noviny, said in a report that China has realized its aerospace dream by the successful launch of Shenzhou-5 and it is the first Asian country to send human beings into the outer space.

The Vietnam News Agency described the success as a significant event of China's space industry and also a historic turning point for the industry's future development.

Noting that China has become the third country to send human beings into space since the former Soviet Union's astronaut, Yury Alekseyevich Gagarin, became the first visitor to the outer space in 1961, Macedonia's news agency quoted some experts as saying that the milestone flight marks another step forward by China to realize the dream of landing on the moon.

Media from Spain, Japan, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, Cameroon, Albania and some other countries also had extensive and detailed reports on China's successful launch of the manned Shenzhou-5 spaceship.

The Shenzhou-5, atop a China-made Long March II F carrier rocket, blasted off at 9 a.m. Wednesday from the Jiuquan SatelliteLaunch Center in China's northwestern Gansu Province, and entered its preset orbit in about 10 minutes.

(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2003)