The Chinese government has in all allocated 18 billion yuan (about 2.2 billion US dollars) for its manned space program by the time of successful return of the Shenzhou-5 space vehicle Thursday morning, according to a press release Thursday.

That translated into 1.6 billion yuan (about 200 million US dollars) in annual average expenditure for the 11-year-old program since 1992.

China's gross domestic product in 2002 was about 10 trillion yuan (1.2 trillion US dollars).

China's funding for science and technology programs from the central government totaled 267 billion yuan during the past five years, or an annual average of 32 billion yuan (3.9 billion US dollars), according to Science and Technology Ministry.

The fund for manned space program was mainly used for scientific research, manufacturing of equipment and instruments, the construction of essential facilities for research and tests, and consequently a system complete with all necessary departments of research, production and test related to manned spaceflight was established.

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