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So bascally they are playing fast catchup. They are in their 1970s period of manned space flight (even though they don't have many flights under their belt yet). They've skipped the moon landing for later and followed the Soviet path instead. The advantage they have (aside from advances in technology, which they may or may not have in their spacecraft) is that everything they are doing has been done before. They don't have to go through the massive amounts of trial and error, not multiple proofs of concept in space as the Soviets and Americans did that in the 1960s and 1970s. The Chinese already know it works, they just need proof that they got it right, thus single attempts to be sure they got it correct followed by the next things in the technology progression. No need for three or four missions to test things out....they just need one mission, then next phase. Unless something goes wrong, then they are forced to slow down to find their errors.
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