Now that China has successfully launched its first space laboratory module with an eye towards a manned space station, how will this affect the global space race or will the Chinese just end up competing with itself?

The Tiangong-1 successfully launched from Jiuquan, Gansu province and helped cement China's lead over other emerging space nations like India, Iran, and South Korea. As China expands with its space plans, the U.S. is pulling away from the space race it had dominated for so long. It recently grounded the space shuttle program and President Obama has scrapped plans to return to the moon.

"China sees space as one of the things that will confirm 'we're now on a par with Western countries, we've entered the club,'" said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington who specializes in technology and security. "It's prestige, it's catching up with the West and it's exploring ways to overcome the U.S. information advantage."

China is already planning to put a capsule on the moon by 2013 and launching its own manned orbital station by 2020. The module it launched yesterday is just practice for China's plans to build a space station.

The Chinese government is "convinced this is the next phase of major competition," said Huang Jing, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. China believes "whoever dominates in outer space will dominate in military warfare."

The Chinese government meanwhile has denied that its space program is a military strategy.

China aims "to contribute to peaceful utilization of space for the benefit of all human kind," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters in Beijing yesterday.

Chinese space superiority could actually be a good thing for NASA. A successful Chinese space program could be the impetus for America to reignite its space ambitions.

"If you look at the history of the space program, history very clearly shows what we can do when we are united," retired Navy Captain Wendy B. Lawrence, a former astronaut who served on six shuttle flights said. "What will it take to get us united again? I have to agree with Charlie - it's time to root for the Chinese because it just may be that we need a good swift kick in the pants."