Beijing - China on Saturday launched two satellites for monitoring the environment and natural disasters, state media said.

The satellites were launched by a Long March-2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launching Centre in the northern province of Shanxi, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They were designed to "enhance the country's capacity to prevent and reduce natural disasters", the agency quoted Bai Zhaoguang, a lead scientist on the satellite project, as saying.

Last year, the government said it planned to develop a new range of heavy-duty Long March rockets for its space and commercial satellite programmes over the next three decades.

In 2003, China became the third country to put launch a manned rocket into space after Russia and the United States.

Its third manned mission, Shenzhou VI, is scheduled to be launched in late September or early October and include China's first space walk.

China plans to build an integrated ground-space network for space exploration and manned space research, including a permanent space laboratory by 2020.