Number 3: You have yet to present one solid fact backed up by evidence as to why China's space program shouldn't be considered to be excelling. In a span of four years, they went from their first unmanned test of the Shenzhou to launching a man in it. That is great progress, and I cannot fathom why you think it isn't.
I think we need to define "great progress here". We certainly can't deny that China is making
progress, but considering the progress of the US and Soviet programs during the 1960s, it probably isn't exceptional (even by modern standards).
So far, the PRC has managed about 0.6 manned flights per year.
Between 1961 and 1966, a similar period of time, the US had launched 6 Mercury and 10 Gemini flights, a rate of 3.2 flights per year. Between 1961 and 1966, the USSR launched 6 Vostok and 2 Voskhod missions, a rate of 1.6 flights per year (even though there were no missions in 1966, I kept it in there for consistency; in a 4-year period, that would be 2 flights per year).
It is also worth noting that this is starting practically right at the beginning of human spaceflight, so everything was pretty much being developed for the first time. In addition, multiple programs were being flown within this time period; Mercury to Gemini, Vostok to Voskhod, with Apollo and Soyuz not far behind.
Two years into its manned spaceflight program, the US had already flown as many people, on single-person vehicles, as have been flown till 2008 in Shenzhou vehicles.
It is also worth noting, however, that Shenzhou is more capable than all of the vehicles in the first era of manned spaceflight by the US and USSR, even Gemini.
If we take other periods in manned spaceflight, such as the first five years after STS-1, we have a rate of 5 flights per year. In the first five years after STS-51L, 8.8 missions per year, and in the first five years after STS-107, 1.2 missions per year.
If we take the first five years of Soyuz flights, we have an average of 2.2 flights per year, first five years of Mir, 2.6 flights per year, the first five years of Soyuz flights to the ISS, also 2.2 flights per year.
So the Chinese flight-rate has indeed been quite low, compared to US and Soviet rates at the beginning of the space age. Three missions are planned for 2012 though, so there is no reason to think that such low flight-rates will continue.
While China comes some 40 years late to the game of manned spaceflight, they have some 40 years of US and Russian experience to build on; information is available freely on the internet now, that a rocket scientist of 1950 could kill for.
Overall capability in space is not really determined by how long you have been flying, but rather by what funding, political attitudes, and program goals you have.
I think the low flight-rate that the Chinese space program has displayed, is understandable. China isn't trying to be the first to put a human into space, to build a space-station, or to go to the Moon. It is long beaten by others in that respect. But what China can do, is do those things, to say that it
can. That China has put a man into space, and built a space station, and joined the "elite club", so to speak.
Is it a huge PR excersise? Of course. Is it propaganda? Of course. Is there anything wrong with it? Not really- the more spaceflights we have, the better, of course.
I do think we need to be realistic about the Chinese space program. What they're doing is important, but not exceptional. We'll wait to see if any exceptional endeavours come out of CNSA.
And of course, it is no reason to be sinophobic. It is also not a threat to the US or Russian space programs. Indeed, even the lack of a spacecraft is not the major threat to the US space program- the general way things are structured, that causes problems, is a far greater threat.
And we'll wait to see if that fate befalls CNSA as well...
EDIT:
What's next? I say lunar landing in late 2020s or early 2030s followed by a construction of a permanent lunar outpost/base.
And will this 'permanent lunar outpost' be constructed with Chinese Skylons or Chinese BDBs?