April 2008
Intermediate to advanced
240 pages
4h 41m
English
If the enemy holds the high ground, you must not ascend and do battle with him.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
During the Middle Ming Dynasty (circa 1500), a star-crossed Chinese official named Wan Hu attempted to become the world’s first astronaut when he constructed a magnificent flying chair outfitted with 47 gunpowder-filled rockets and 2 kites for wings. After a giant explosion at “lift-off,” neither the rocket chair nor the daring official was seen again.
Fast forward half a millennium and a now very modern China has traveled light years in its pursuit of the ultimate strategic high ground. A tipping point in that journey into deep space occurred in 2003 when China’s ...
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