Rise of the Taikonauts

Coming from the Greek word astro and naut which simply means star and sailor respectively, astronaut naturally refers to someone who is trained to travel in space. The word exists long before Yury Gagarin became the first man in space, appearing in Percy Greg's 1880 science fiction Across the Zodiac where the word refers to a spacecraft. While space travellers from United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan are called astronauts, Yury Gagarin who was from Russia is called cosmonaut. The astronauts who recently returned from a successful three-month stay on China's new Earth-orbiting station; Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo are taikonauts; taiko from the Mandarin word 太空 tàikōng which means where else; but outer space. China's space programs has its technological roots in the late 1950s but it is only since the beginning of 21st century that there were major achievements. Suppose this has led to the rise of the term taikonaut.