Griffin told a Senate subcommittee on science and space during a hearing in
Washington DC last Tuesday that he was looking forward to the visit.
Griffin said that the United States needs both good partners and competitors
in space exploration, and sometimes they can be both a competitor and a partner.
Zhang said as with other countries, China and the United States can
co-operate in areas including deep space exploration, commercial satellite
launches and manned space flights.
"So far as technology is concerned, we will respect each other's intellectual
property rights," he said.
Zhang, also deputy chief commander of China's Manned Space Programme, said
that technological innovation has enabled China to "spend less money but achieve
more" in its manned space programme.
The country has earmarked around 20 billion yuan (US$2.47 billion) for its
manned space programme since it was initiated in 1992, catapulting China into
the exclusive space club that three years ago housed only the former Soviet
Union and the United States.
The spending paled when compared with the cost of the US Appollo Programme,
which totalled US$25 billion, spent between 1962 and 1972.
In addition to building ground facilities, half of China's expenditure has
been allocated to the rocket and spacecraft systems, both of which were
developed by Zhang's company, the Study Times weekly reported this week.
Theoretically, the more tests and trial launches are made, the higher success
rate for both rockets and spacecraft.
With painstaking technological brainstorming, Chinese scientists have applied
55 new technologies, including innovative solutions for fault detection and
escape systems, on the Long March 2F rocket the carrier of China's spacecraft,
raising its reliability rate from 91 per cent for unmanned launches to 97 per
cent for manned missions, Zhang said.
The overall safety rate reached a staggering 99.7 per cent, he said.
Space innovations have been increasingly applied to national economic
development, Zhang said.
Between 1999 and 2005, China successfully launched two manned and four
unmanned space missions atop the Long March 2F rockets.