As the US continues to focus its efforts on terrorism and related issues, China will more or less quietly keep building up its space program. By 2015, I would not be surprised if they have their own manned space station in Earth orbit (or they just end up buying the ISS outright, or taking it over - now there could be an interesting SF story) and their own robot probes on the Moon and nearer planets.

Regarding manned spaceflight in general, I don't think the opposition to it is just because a spaceship has people on board. More likely space scientists know that to get missions there and results back sooner and cheaper are best done by automated probes. Granted they sometimes end up not being as glamorous and exciting, but that is not what the PIs are after. It's almost a Catch-22 situation, isn't it?