The United States and China are on the threshold of a space race that could radically influence international security, yet the incentives to cooperate remain woefully limited. Given the stakes involved, both sides should seek to avert, or at least to manage, this looming competition (Martel & Yoshihara, 2003). Encompassing civilian as well as military programs, the two countries are engaged in a fierce competition, in a space which let us say the lack of legislation.
After China landed its Chang’e-4 spacecraft and Yutu-2 rover on the far side of the moon in January, the Washington Post published an alarmist opinion essay under the headline “The new space race pits the US against China. The US is losing badly.” However, it seems necessary here to agree on the definition of our object of study. Indeed, Space Race appears to be a language abuse referring to the Apollo era as the space analyst John Logsdon declared. However, we will continue to use this term to make things simpler and more understandable. But the phrase suggests a zero-sum contest to be first to reach a defined finish line. It is not driven by schedule or deadlines or by seeking a specific goal. Rather, it is an ongoing, high-stakes competition for space achievements and innovative approaches to accomplishing them. Both countries are setting out space plans that reflect their own interests and aspirations rather than the quest to be “first” (Logsdon, 2019). Competition in space is taking place in the context of the broader contest of developing advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced pharmaceuticals etc. As both powers are world military and economic leaders, they also aspire to master advanced technologies.
The competition is also geopolitical. The US intends to remain the world’s leading power and guarantor of a world order based on democratic politics and free market economics. A position that the country has adopted since the Cold War and that continues to agitate its global political ambitions. China is challenging that hegemonic status, seeking to become the dominant global country, spreading its authoritarian approach to governance and its state-centered approach to social and economic development. One of China’s main geopolitical challenges is not only to become a regional hegemonic power in the Indo-Pacific, but also to become the world’s leading radiating country. Beyond that, these space innovations are recognized as the witness of the vitality of the two countries. The recognition that China was first to land on the lunar far side is an example of the continuing propaganda value of visible space accomplishments. That China got more propaganda benefit from the Chang’e-4 landing than the US did from flying the New Horizons probe precisely by the space rock Ultima Thule 6 billion kilometres from Earth suggests the advantage of being the new entry in the space competition (ibid). This paper will propose to analyse the consequences of China’s growing space power and, more dangerously, the potential collision of U.S. and Chinese interests in space.
Chinese objectives by conquering space
China’s interests in space reflect broad commercial and military interests. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) views the exploitation of space as an integral part of its modernization drive, a top priority on Beijing’s national agenda (State Council, 2000). The rapid growth of the Chinese economy has allowed civilian space research to develop at a rapid pace. First of all, the explosion of telecommunication networks, especially through foreign companies, has increased the number of satellites in orbit. Second, Chinese launchers are much cheaper and on average more reliable than other offerings in the world, which has allowed China to provide a satellite launch service for international consumers. Moreover, China recognizes space science research as capable of generating positive externalities for its economy and technological capabilities in the longer term.
Chinese launch vehicles, which have become increasingly reliable and competitive in the international market, can place a variety of satellites into earth orbit. In the case of national security, China’s space program is shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively shielding Chinese intentions and capabilities from outside observers. According to Chinese officials, the exploitation of space will be for technological innovation and economic growth. The Chinese elites refuse any hypothesis of space militarization (People’s Daily, 2002). China has consistently warned that any testing, deployment, and use of space-based weapons will undermine global security and lead to a destabilizing arms race in space (Xinhua, 2002). Obviously, these public announcements follow the declaration of the American president George W. Bush in 2001 announcing the exit of the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and accelerating U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system. Diplomatically, China has urged the use of multilateral and bilateral legal instruments to regulate space activities, and Beijing and Moscow jointly oppose the development of space weapons or the militarization of space, as they submitted a joint proposal in 2008 to the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament (Nebehay, 2008). But can we believe it? We will come back to this in the rest of this presentation. This frivolity of China in this field testifies to the awareness of the domination of the United States in space since the Gulf War in 1991, but also to the ambitions of China in this field that it tends to explore. Demonstrations of U.S. intelligence superiority through space dominance in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq have caused China to look up to the sky.
Beijing uses its space program to advance its terrestrial geopolitical objectives, including cultivating customers for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), while also using diplomatic ties to advance its goals in space, such as by establishing an expanding network of overseas space ground stations. China’s promotion of launch services, satellites, and the Beidou global navigation system under its “Space Silk Road” is deepening participants’ reliance on China for space-based services. Beijing has had some success expanding its space tracking and observation capabilities through partnerships established through its space-related diplomacy, which it has used to advance both its space capabilities and geopolitical influence (US-China Economic and Security Review commission, 2019). For example, the space control center in Argentina, which Beijing gained approval to construct and operate at a time when Argentina was deeply indebted to China, represents a significant expansion of China’s ability to track and control space assets via a global network of ground stations and may represent a new model for Chinese over-seas basing. Experts assert the facility operates with virtually no transparency and could be used to collect intelligence on satellites, missile launches, and drone movements, and to interfere with or compromise communications, electronic networks, and electromagnetic systems in the Western Hemisphere (U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, 2018). China is therefore actively developing its space capabilities, aimed at ground intelligence and counter-operations in space, which could constitute a threat in the future.
US Position and competition’s aspects
Conventional wisdom holds that space is so vital to national security and economic prosperity that the United States will do whatever it takes to protect its ability to use space. In economic terms, the United States relies on space technologies and capabilities to support a wide range of commercial activities. Among the most important commercial assets in space is the constellation of Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation satellites. The precise timing signals emitted from the GPS allow automobiles, aircraft, and ships to locate their positions and establish the chronological order for virtually all financial transactions. Equally important, commercial satellites carry most global communications. Despite the phenomenal growth rate of fiber optics networks, commercial satellites still dominate long-haul global communications (Martel & Yoshihara, ibid). But space also has a major military interest for the United States. The U.S. military has integrated space technologies into virtually all aspects of military operations, dramatically improving U.S. military power. Communication satellites allow military commanders to be connected to their forces, while the navigation signal from GPS satellites is essential for precision attacks. In sum, because U.S. military effectiveness and commercial competitiveness depend so overwhelmingly on space, the country is increasingly vulnerable to an adversary’s malicious use of space or attacks against space systems. At present, most nations cannot challenge the United States directly, but there are fears that states might someday attack US satellites to cripple its military capabilities. Policymakers in the United States are increasingly concerned that this is precisely China’s strategy.
We can therefore see that space is an extremely important dimension for American policies, both economic and military. Meanwhile, as each U.S. administration since 2004 has declared resuming human travel beyond Earth orbit as its objective, strategies for accomplishing that goal have varied widely, and progress has come in fits and starts. The Summary of the 2018 National Defence Strategy issued by the US Department of Defence stressed that the ‘central challenge’ to the Pentagon was how to tackle ‘there emergence of long-term, strategic competition’ with China and other rival states (US Department of Defense, 2018). In October2018, while attending the Chinese Embassy in Washington’s National Day celebrations, senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council Matt Pottinger unequivocally stated that, ‘Weat the administration have updated our China policy to bring the concept of competition to the forefront’ (The Economist, 2018). The executive and legislative branches of US government have reached a new consensus on taking awhole-of-government approach to curbing China’s rising power and international influence through better harnessing America’s various policy tools (Smith, 2019). Most Chinese analysts recognise that there is an emerging consensus across the political spectrum in the United States on revising the United States’ China policy and adopting a more competitive strategy towards China, although there are still certain disagreements on a tactical level (Zhao, 2019). This strategic opposition to China has its roots long before the previous President Trump’s term in a coalition composed of far-right populists, security hawks, and hard-to-impress radicals. Obviously, the rivalry between the US and China has crystallized around the commercial issue in what could be described as a trade war or a technology race, which has reached new heights under the Trump presidency and the multiple exchanges of tariff barriers.
On the geostrategic level, Chinese analysts hold that the Asia-Pacific, especially the Western Pacific, is the focal point of US–China strategic competition. The Americans have indeed ambitions in the Western Pacific, but also the will to thwart China’s plans in the Indian Ocean and the Chinese Sea Belt project. Meanwhile, China has in recent years carried out a more proactive diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region. Beijing acted firmly in its response to other regional countries and in addressing territorial and maritime disputes. Therefore, China and the United States face a head-on conflict of interests in the Asia-Pacific. The terrestrial competitions between the two giants would continue in space, constituting only a continuation of the opposition already at work. However, there is one aspect that many analysts are concerned about as a major threat.
Arms race? Update on the situation
In January 2007, China launched a missile into space releasing a vehicle that destroyed a Chinese weather satellite. Repercussions were immediately felt not only in American strategy, but throughout the world. Indeed, these Chinese anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) can be mass-produced in the Middle Kingdom and could pose a threat to the United States because of their ability to destroy American low-orbit satellites on which the U.S. military depends heavily (MacDonald, 2008). China’s strategy to build up its domestic space industry, according to the May 2019 joint report by the Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Innovation Unit, includes intellectual property theft, direct integration of state-owned entities and their technology with commercial start-ups, using front companies to invest in U.S. space companies, gaining vertical control of supply chains, and predatory pricing.
Moreover, authoritative People’s Liberation Army (PLA, the regular Chinese army) writings on military operations in the space domain contain a number of principles almost entirely absent from U.S. and other foreign military doctrine that would encourage a highly escalatory approach to space warfare. These would allow for attacks against an adversary’s space assets early in a conflict to deter an opponent from decisively intervening in or continuing a military confrontation. China’s development of offensive space capabilities may now be outstripping the United States’ ability to defend against them, increasing the possibility that US vulnerability combined with a lack of a credible deterrence posture could invite Chinese aggression (Harrisson, 2019). China’s counter-space doctrine is intended to deter the United States from entering a conflict and provide options for rapid escalation once conflict has begun represents a risk destabilize the global space environment and jeopardize safety in the atmosphere. Beijing views space and cyberspace as domains to dominate and to deny to its adversaries, and it would likely seek to accomplish this in part by deploying cyberattacks or electromagnetic attacks against space-based assets, including commercial or civilian assets, both in steady state and early in any conflict (Ray, 2019).
In the last decade, China has made massive investments, developing direct-ascent, cyber, electromagnetic, and co-orbital counter-space weapons and demonstrated the credibility of its competences in that domain. Since its 2007 test, China has not repeated a demonstration of its ballistic force. However, it has continued to test kinetic counter-space systems nearly every year, sometimes disguised as midcourse ballistic missile intercept tests. General John Raymond, US Air Force said in 2015 that the Chinese device would soon be sophisticated enough to reach any of the satellites in orbit around the globe. China has engaged in dual-use activities, which means that it is able to perform co-orbital actions, such as rendezvous and proximity operations that, while not prohibited, create problems for US national security (US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, ibid). There is a distinct possibility that platforms with dual-use capabilities could be used for offensive purposes when needed. For example, the Chinese satellite Aolong-1 has robotic arms for grappling other satellites to inspect or service them, and although these capabilities have peaceful uses, they would be easy to weaponize. Some analysts have also been especially concerned by the RPO activities in GEO of the Chinese satellite SJ-17, reportedly a testbed for new propulsion, surveillance, and solar panel technology. SJ-17 has transited the geostationary belt, and its movements suggest it has a significant manoeuvrability, including the ability to change its orbit. China’s single-minded focus and national-level commitment to establishing itself as a global space leader harms other U.S. interests and threatens to undermine many of the advantages the United States has worked so long to establish. China’s strategy to capture the global launch and satellite markets using aggressive financing and subsidies that U.S. market-driven firms cannot match is only one of the challenges posed to the United States by Beijing’s drive for space leadership.
Due to the inherent dual-use nature of space technology, developments in this field can be difficult to pinpoint. China will aim to use space for military purposes in the same way that Western states use it: for intelligence, targeting, navigation, command, control, and communications, operating UAVs, and possibly in the future missile warning (Kuo, 2021). The most plausible scenario would be that tensions in space would follow tensions on earth, and thus space innovations would have repercussions in areas of concern for China, in Taiwan or India for example, or in the South China Sea. Space developments are intimately linked to terrestrial military issues, which should not be lost sight of. Indeed, the development of space technologies is intended to help the Chinese troops on the ground in their great majority. Taking into account the Chinese “nuclearization” factor, such a threat hovering in the sky can only worry the United States but also the entire international community.
It seems therefore imperative to strengthen the international legislation on the use of space but also to regulate the possible interference with the Earth during conflicts. Diplomatically, a work must be engaged instead of making a common front against China as we can currently observe. It seems illusory to think that a strategy of voluntary disablement of Chinese space equipment could be negotiated like demilitarization in a conflict zone. This is why it seems important to renew the dialogue with China, especially the United States, which must consider China not as an enemy but as a partner. A further rise in tensions could only lead to harmful consequences that would be undesirable for any of the world’s actors and could even aggravate certain conflict zones by relying on new technologies.
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By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
