Sour grapes
"Yamanouchi said China's progress towards launching its first manned space flight was aimed at showing off its military strength.
"It is completely different from what Japan is doing," he said, adding that Japan's space programmes were more technologically sophisticated than Chinese ones."
Japan seems to have an entire vineyard of sour grapes. If there program is so much better then why can they barely get a rocket off the gound? A couple of years ago the French said that the Shenzhou was a old design and didn't mean anything. Even if that's true, an old design is still far better than no design.