Rising

In 1992 when Tiangong was first envisioned, China represented just 2% of the world economy. It’s since grown to be the world’s second-most sophisticated spacefaring nation, and over the last few years has completed dozens of major launches including placing a lander on the Moon’s far side, deploying a rover on Mars, and now completing their space station.

Their rise has been almost entirely self-driven, as unlike NASA which prospers from the deep cooperation with the space agencies of Europe, Canada, Japan, and Russia, the passing of the Cox Amendment in the United States in 2011 prevented any collaboration at all between the two countries on space matters.

Weeks ago, when the Artemis 1 mission successfully launched the spacecraft Orion into its short journey around the Moon and back again, the Chinese Space Agency hailed a “thrilling” return to the Apollo-era of Lunar exploration.

Nevertheless, the last three years have seen attempts to make Cox Agreement permanent—removing the necessity to vote on its renewal. Without interference from the scientific community or civilian leadership, the Pentagon has taken the opportunity of the spectacular advances in China’s space program to talk up their threat to US national security in the strongest possible language.

The 174-page congressionally mandated report from the DoD on its annual estimations on Chinese military strength considers the PRC “the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security”.

The report raves about Chinese efforts to integrate space into their military strategies, including for intelligence gathering, targeting, GPS tracking, and more, as well as its anti-satellite weaponry.

This is to say nothing of the fact that all sophisticated militaries on Earth have already incorporated these principles, or at least accepted that they are necessary for all warfighting domains to include something as basically-modern as using satellites for intelligence gathering. WaL