Beijing ? Chinese exulted at their country’s second manned space flight Wednesday after the government eased its secrecy and showed the launch of two astronauts on live television, scoring a success in a costly program that communist leaders hope will win them respect abroad and public support at home.

Children in Shanghai watched in class and hundreds of people gathered around a giant video screen at Beijing’s main railway station to see astronauts Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng blast off from a base in China’s desert northwest.

“I am feeling really emotional,” said a construction worker at the Beijing train station, who would give only his surname, Liu. “This is a proud moment – not only for China, but for Chinese people all over the world, and for humankind.”

The flight came two years after China launched its first astronaut into orbit in October 2003, becoming only the third nation able to send a human into space on its own, after Russia and the United States.

None of that flight was telecast live, apparently out of fear that something might go wrong.

A giant television screen at the Beijing railway station shows astronauts about to board the the Shenzhou VI rocket during a live broadcast of the launch on Wednesday.

But on Wednesday, Chinese viewers were allowed to see the liftoff and live scenes of Fei and Nie in their cockpit as they roared skyward. A camera attached to the outside of the rocket showed the ground dropping away.

The manned space program is a key prestige project for the communist government. Chinese leaders hope that patriotic pride at its triumphs will shore up their standing amid wrenching economic change and public anger at corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.

President Hu Jintao and other Communist Party leaders were shown watching Wednesday’s launch from a Beijing command center, while Premier Wen Jiabao was at the Gobi Desert launch base.

China has had a rocketry program since the 1950s and fired its first satellite into orbit in 1970. It regularly launches satellites for foreign clients aboard its giant Long March boosters.

Chinese space officials say they hope to land an unmanned probe on the moon by 2010 and want to launch a space station.