Here’s what to expect in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games: China will link its growing prowess in space with its success at the Games.

Here’s the chronology. In 2007, as excitement builds around the Games, China will launch an unmanned lunar orbit and give it major national press coverage.

Then in 2008, some time before the Games begin, China’s space agency will carry out a manned space walk, a huge achievement that will certainly increase national pride.

A gentleman closely involved in aspects of space promotion laid out the plans for me this evening, on condition of anonymity.

“China is branding itself as an innovation country, and space is the reflection of that,” he said. He noted that China’s leaders are already using the space program successfully in casting themselves as the architects of China’s rise.

“Every time a rocket goes up, the president (Hu Jintao) is at the launch site and the premier (Wen Jiabao) is in Beijing at the control center,” he said.

The manned space walk, he said, will “be around the same time at the Olympics opening” and the leaders “will create an association in people’s minds” about the two events.