I heard the word "taikonaut" being bandied around on CNN today and decided to find out what it was all about.

From Space Today Online :

"While men and women who fly in American spacecraft are known as astronauts, and those who fly in Russian spacecraft are cosmonauts, those who fly in Chinese spacecraft are known as yuhangyuans or sometimes taikonauts."

"The word yuhangyuan is Chinese for space navigator. It is the name used by official media when reporting on the nation's astronauts. The word taikonaut is derived from taikong, the Chinese word for space. The term is believed to have been used first by a Singapore website."

This is news to me.

Since when have these distinctions been made? There's no etymological basis for the distinction.

And is a Russian, if he should find himself in a Chinese spacecraft, also a taikonaut?

I prefer spaceman myself.