China to establish space lab around 2016

China will complete the second step of its three-phase development strategy for its manned space program by establishing its own space lab around 2016, a spokeswoman for China''s manned space program has said. Spokeswoman Wu Ping made the remarks at a press conference here after the country''s unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 and the space lab module Tiangong-1 successfully docked with each other at 1:36 a.m. Thursday. Through more than 10 years of efforts, China has made breakthroughs in key technologies and formed a set of design, production and experiment systems for the spacecraft''s space docking, Xinhua news quoted Wu as saying.