The programme -- which remains largely hidden from the world media -- is the focus of renewed attention following last weekend's 21-hour unmanned test flight of China's Shenzhou space capsule.

The test confirmed China's bid to become the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to put a man in space.

Moscow provided intensive training to two Chinese astronauts on Russian soil since inking an agreement with Beijing three years ago, the Laodong Daily said.

A report in the China Business Times identified the pair as Wu Jie and Li Qinglong, who have since become the chief instructors for China's indigenous training programme.

They attended courses in astro-navigation and astronomy at the Star City Space Centre outside of Moscow, training on use of Russian space equipment including components copied from the orbiting space station Mir, the Laodong Daily said.

Wu and Li took "all necessary courses" connected to manned space missions, mastering flight techniques of Russian spacecraft, it said.

Their training wound up in 1997 with exams and simulations at the Yuri Gagarian Cosmonaut Training Centre, where they receiving high marks, the report added.

Both are now stationed at a specialised training base west of Beijing, where China is training its first batch of astronauts, hand picked from the country's top fighter-interceptor pilots.

Russian assistance with the manned space programme appears to extend beyond training.

Although the Shenzhou has been trumpeted by the state propaganda machine as "completely indigenous" Western analysts say the capsule appeared in pictures to be little more than a slightly modified version of the old Soviet workhorse of space, the Soyuz.

American experts in particular are convinced that China -- seeking a technological short cut -- simply paid Russia heavily for sharing experience in manned missions stretching back to 1961.

According to past media reports, Beijing's astronaut training base incorporates an acceleration-tolerance machine, weightlessness simulators and other equipment.

Copyright 1999 AFP. All rights reserved. The material on this page is provided by AFP and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A POWERFUL DRAGON
Shenzhou: The Fun Begins
Sydney - November 24, 1999 - In today's world little remains secret for long, but if China has its way, we can expect plenty of misinformation to mire any substantial insight into its new Taikonaut program. In an extended analysis Morris Jones writes that China is like a flashback to the early Soviet space program where every new bit of information is dissected
and analysed fueling yet another
round of speculation.
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