BEIJING (Reuters) - China publicized today details of a missile test-launch it conducted earlier this month, confirming it had fired the new Dong Feng-31 long-range ballistic missile.

State media also said China hoped to put an unmanned space vehicle in orbit by the end of the year and to put a person in space around 2005.

``It was the first test launch of this type of missile,'' it said. The three-stage, solid-fuel rocket was launched from northern Shanxi province and crashed down in the western territory of Xinjiang, it said.

The DF-31, estimated by Jane's Defence Weekly to have an 8,000 km (5,000 miles) range and capable of carrying a 700 kg (1,500 lb) nuclear warhead, would be featured in Communist China's 50th anniversary parade on October 1, the article said.

``The DF-31 should be operationally deployed by China in 2000,'' said Robert Karniol, Asian correspondent for Jane's.

China was expected to build 10 to 20 DF-31 missiles, some of them for deployment on hard-to-find mobile launchers, replacing 1960s-era missiles with only half the range, Karniol said.

The Guangzhou newpaper said China had also developed technology for manned space flight and hoped to send an unmanned capsule into orbit by the end of the year with a manned space-shot following around 2005.

It was also working on a space shuttle program based on that of the United States, it said.

``The core of the program will be the development of a new series of carrier rockets -- the Long March 5s,'' the article quoted Wang Xinqing, head of the China Carrier-Rocket Research Institute, which designs military and civilian-use rockets, as saying.

The new rockets would have the capacity to carry 20 tons -- ``enough to meet the demands of launching a manned spacecraft,'' Wang was quoted as saying.

Wang also slammed a U.S. Congressional report which alleges the Chinese stole U.S. missile and nuclear warhead technology, saying China perfected rocketry before the United States, it said.

He is ``willing to take up the matter with Cox face-to-face,'' the article said, referring to Christopher Cox, the U.S. congressman who chairs the committee which issued the report.