GLASGOW, Scotland - China's human spaceflight program plans to build on the success of the Shenzhou 7 mission to launch a simple orbiting "space lab" by 2011 and assemble a human-tended space station from several of the labs by 2020.

Sun Laiyan, administrator of the China National Space Administration, said here Sept. 29 that his country plans "step-by-step progress, because we have to lay a solid foundation for our next step.

"The space station is still a bit of a long way to go, because we have [to have] docking and rendezvous first," Sun said through an interpreter. "That will be the next step."

Once a future Shenzhou mission demonstrates rendezvous and docking, he said, China plans to build the free-flying laboratory module. The target date for that mission is 2011, Sun told the 59th International Astronautical Congress.

"Our understanding of the space station is [that it will be] composed of a number of space labs," Sun said. "The space station will be a fully automatic system, with man's attendance periodically. Of course, that's a future scenario, and there are many risks we can see now."