Three astronauts manned the Shenzhou-10 as it blasted from the Jiuquan base in Mongolia at 5:38 p.m. Beijing local time.
The commander, Nie Haisheng, and his crew, Zhang Xiaoguang and Wang Yaping, will be in space for two weeks at the orbiting Tiangong space lab.
Wang is China's second female astronaut and will lecture a group of students on Earth live from space.
"We are all students in facing the vast universe. We are looking forward to joining our young friends to learn and explore the mystical and beautiful universe," told Wang to reporters a press conference on Monday.
China's President Xi Jinping wished the crew luck before the launch.
"You have made Chinese people feel proud of ourselves,'' Xi told the space crew. "You have trained and prepared yourselves carefully and thoroughly, so I am confident in your completing the mission successfully. I wish you success and look forward to your triumphant return.''
This is the fifth manned mission for the Shenzhou-10 and at 15 days is the longest China has ever seen.
"The vessel is already in orbit," said Zhang Youxia, the manned space program's chief commander, in a press statement. "I now announce the launch was a great success."
"The crew's capsule was ejected from the upper-stage of the rocket about nine minutes after lift-off. Mission controllers clapped enthusiastically once the ship's solar panels had been deployed," according to BBC News.
China's next step in their human spaceflight program reportedly may be to allow Europe to have flight opportunities for its astronauts on a proposed new Chinese space station. According to reports, Beijing may launch the new space station at the "turn of the decade."
"We are looking at possibilities to use this space station," the European Space Agency's human spaceflight director Thomas Reiter told the BBC News. "The way ahead is that we will likely see first an exchange of experiments. And there are now also a few colleagues at the European Astronaut Centre who have started Chinese language training."
You can watch the launch in the video below.
