Sometime this month, from a town at the edge of the Gobi Desert and not far from the terminus of the Great Wall, one man, or maybe two, will blast into space.

After four unmanned trial flights, China hopes to launch and successfully return its yuhangyuan — Chinese for astronaut, or literally translated, "universe traveler" — aboard a spacecraft called Shenzhou V, adapted from the Russian Soyuz design.

China would become only the third nation to achieve manned spaceflight. The feat would follow the Soviet Union and the United States by 42 years, but would not diminish its significance for a country eager to join the ranks of the world's leading powers.

"Now China can be at the same level as the world powers," said Zhai Liyuan, a physicist with the China Association for Science and Technology.

China's reach for the stars doesn't end with a low-Earth orbit. It has stated its ambitions to explore the moon, build a space station and send a probe to Mars by 2020.

The propaganda value of such achievements is undeniable. It would help bestow legitimacy on a communist leadership struggling with a multitude of social and economic ills, while galvanizing national pride and proving the country's technological prowess, analysts say.

But beyond the prestige, Beijing hopes its space program will bring technical benefits to the military and help spur advances in communications, medical technology and other fields, much as the Apollo program did for the United States in the 1960s.

"Practically speaking, the main goal for China is, like the United States did, to accelerate high-level scientific developments," said Zhai.

Although China has been launching satellites for more than 30 years, the manned space program was started partly as a reaction to the advanced U.S. military technology displayed in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to Charles Vick, a consultant for globalsecurity.org and an expert on the Chinese and Russian space programs.

Competition with India, which has announced plans for a lunar mission in 2008, is also prodding China.