China is celebrating the safe return of its taikonauts after a three-day voyage into space. The mission of Shenzhou 7 included also China’s first spacewalk.

The climax of China's first ever spacewalk was a live broadcast to China's 1.3 billion citizens of Zhai waving the red Chinese flag during his spacewalk outside the Shenzhou 7 spacecraft.

Communist Party Chairman and President Hu Jintao "thanked" and "congratulated" the 41-year-old taikonaut via radio from mission control centre in Beijing for his "outstanding contribution" to the Chinese space programme.

The three Chinese astronauts have returned to Earth on the capsule that touched down safely near the planned landing site in the northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia at 5:38 pm (0938 GMT).

The landing that concluded the 68-hour mission was broadcasted live on Chinese state television.

The craft withstood the dangerous re-entry into Earth's atmosphere well, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The taikonauts - Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng - were also in good health, Xinhua reported, citing ground control officials in Beijing.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the mission was "a victory of the Chinese space and technological field and a monumental achievement in the Socialist causes."

"Your historical feat will be remembered by the country and the people," he said.

Zhai Zhigang, the first Chinese who conducted a spacewalk, said that the mission was “glorious”, “full of challenges with a perfect result”. Shenzhou 7 also placed a small satellite into orbit.

The image of the taikonaut waving the Chinese flag was played and replayed on huge screens around the capital.

It was no coincidence that the spacewalk took place so soon after the successful Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games and shortly before the People's Republic of China's national day on October 1

Late Saturday, China's manned space programme spokesman Wang Zhaoyao disclosed that a fire alarm had gone off during the Saturday spacewalk. But it was just a false alarms caused by a sensor error.

However, the Chinese space specialists realized realized the fire alarm was in the orbital module which was "opened to the vacuum of outer space and no air was there to ignite the flame."

Despite the jubilation over the technological capabilities of China, which became the third country after Russia and the United States to achieve a manned space mission in 2005, Australian expert Morris Jones said China's space programme was somewhere at the level of 1967 compared to its two forerunners.

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