Included among those missions was Shenzou 11, which carried a crew of two to dock with China's Tiangong-2 spacecraft, a temporary orbiting space habitat serving as a stepping stone for a larger, permanent Chinese space station in the early 2020s. In 2016, China launched more rockets than Russia for the first time, equaling the 22 rockets launched by the United States. In the years since, it has moved rapidly toward parity with space powers like Russia and the United States. Prior to 2003 China - whose space program dates back to the 1950s - had never put an astronaut (a 'taikonaut' in Chinese nomenclature) into orbit.
But on that relatively small budget, China has managed to accomplish big things. Though the exact value of China's spending on its space programs remains shrouded in secrecy, many analysts peg its civilian space budget at around $3 billion annually in recent years, a fraction of the $19.3 billion the United States allocated to NASA in 2016.
