Society

China's women astronauts may fly to space as soon as the latter half of next year, said a senior official in charge of the manned space program on Friday.

Yang Liwei, deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, said that following the country's first unmanned rendezvous and docking mission between the space module Tiangong-1 and an unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou VIII later this year, two more Shenzhou spacecraft will blast off next year to improve the rendezvous and docking technologies.

At least one of the two spacecraft next year will be manned, said Yang, who is also China's first astronaut to space.

"Two to three astronauts will be sent to space in that manned mission next year," he said, without elaborating.

Fei Junlong, leader of China's astronaut team, told reporters that the two women astronauts and five men astronauts - the second batch of Chinese astronauts, who were selected last year - have to take a three-year training course before carrying out space missions.

But Yang said that there are possibilities for the women to join next year's mission.

The two women astronauts, both pilots from the People's Liberation Army Air Force, are the first women astronauts in China.

China's latest push to ban smoking in indoor public venues has come into effect.

The Health Ministry's amended guidelines on the management of public places that now ban smoking in more venues like hotels and restaurants were implemented Sunday.

Various observers have noted this week that China's economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016. This comes from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April world economic outlook database. Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first time in more than a century that the United States will no longer be the world's largest economy, this development will be the object of some discussion – from various perspectives.

First, let's consider the economics. China has been the world's fastest growing economy for more than three decades, growing 17-fold in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since 1980. It is worth emphasising that most of this record growth took place (1980-2000) while the rest of the developing world was doing quite badly by implementing neoliberal policy changes – indiscriminate opening to trade and capital flows, increasingly independent central banks, tighter (and often pro-cyclical) fiscal and monetary policies, and the abandonment of previously successful development strategies.

China's population is aging rapidly, the government said Thursday, though its leaders are refusing to relax strict family planning controls that are part of the cause.

The results of a national census conducted late last year show the proportion of elderly people in the country of 1.34 billion jumped, while that of young people plunged sharply. The census results, announced Thursday, also show that half the population now lives in cities.

The census adds data to the world-changing shifts under way in China in the past decade, as economic reforms raise living standards and pull more people off farms into the cities while families get smaller and the population ages.

China's rapid aging has fueled worries over how long the country will be able to sustain its high economic growth, as fewer young people are available to work in factories and build the roads that transformed it into the world's second biggest economy after the United States.