Even so, the international community was startled by China’s successful test of a satellite-killing ballistic missile on Jan. 11, which triggered protests from the United States, Japan, Australia and other countries. A defunct Chinese weather satellite in low orbit—which happens to be roughly where U.S. reconnaissance satellites are parked—was destroyed by a “kinetic energy weapon,” probably a DF-21 intermediate-range ballistic missile. That’s an old piece of kit. But what’s new is the accuracy of the homing device that helped it destroy a refrigerator-sized satellite 500 miles in space. “The assumption had been that China didn’t have such accuracy. In the eyes of the U.S. defense community, it shows the Chinese have a higher level of capability than previously thought,” says Michael D. Swaine, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Some people are thinking, ‘If they can do this and we didn’t’ know about it, what else can they do that we don’t know about?’”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao insisted, “This test was not directed at any country, and does not constitute a threat to any country.” But that sounded a tad disingenuous. Chinese officials have made no secret of their anxiety—and impatience—over the U.S. refusal to ban weapons in space, despite Chinese and Russian pressure on Washington to do so. The U.S. National Space Policy unveiled last October asserts the right to deny anyone deemed “hostile to U.S. interests” access to space—a declaration that one Chinese official described as reeking of “the overpowering smell of gunpowder.” Teng Jianqun, deputy director of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, wrote that the “hegemonic flavor” of the new policy “betrays an intense determination to exercise control over space.”
China’s military prowess has often been cloaked by the Chinese philosophy of “keeping one’s capabilities low-key and biding one’s time.” The recent test appears to have blown the cover on that; perhaps Beijing’s display of muscle-flexing surprised foreign analysts more accustomed to the cute and cuddly face of Chinese “soft power.” But that doesn’t explain the long diplomatic silence from China’s Foreign Ministry, which didn’t admit that the test had taken place until this week, nearly two weeks after the fact. The day the news of the test broke publicly in Beijing, Jan. 19, spokesman Liu Jianchao was besieged by reporters at a Foreign Ministry reception. He dodged and weaved around the question of whether the test had actually occurred—“I’ve received no instructions regarding such a test,” he said—and wound up reiterating Beijing’s longstanding position of opposing weapons in space.
That long period of hemming and hawing suggests Foreign Ministry diplomats were either out of the loop completely, or aware of the test but caught off guard by the intensity of international reaction. Some sort of miscalculation seems likely—given the fact that this wasn’t Beijing’s first launch of a satellite-killing missile. U.S. experts say China conducted at least three failed antisatellite (ASAT) tests previously, in April, October and November of last year. Although U.S. military strategists were well aware of the 2006 failures, they didn’t say anything publicly, and neither did the Chinese. Perhaps Beijing authorities had assumed—incorrectly as it turned out—that both sides would keep mum this time, too.
Beijing’s military sees America’s growing reliance on satellites as a vulnerability. A Chinese article that analyzed the U.S. use of satellites during the 2003 Iraq War estimated that “the U.S. relied on satellites for 95 percent of recon and surveillance information, 90 percent of military communications, 100 percent of navigation and positioning,” says Dean Cheng, who tracks Chinese military and technology issues at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington D.C.
Chinese authorities acknowledge their country is a newcomer in space, and insist they aren’t challenging the leading position of the Americans, or of the Russians, for that matter. However, China’s recent ASAT tests may have been a deterrent signal, planting seeds of doubt about the assumption of U.S. supremacy in space. A decade ago, the Chinese regime showed its displeasure with pro-independence politicians on Taiwan by conducting live missile tests near the island. (Beijing considers Taiwan a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland—by force, if necessary.)
In a warning to Beijng to lay off, Washington moved two aircraft carrier groups near the Taiwan Strait. Now, although it’s far from operational, Beijing appears to be seeking the capability to cripple the satellites on which U.S. military operations depend—which could change the calculation in any future Taiwan crisis. “The U.S. relies heavily on specialized satellites, so this test might make the U.S. think over whether they would want to get involved in the Taiwan Strait,” says Arthur Ding, a security analyst at Taipei’s National Chengchi University.
Many American defense experts say China’s recent test calls for the start of a realistic international dialogue in hopes of avoiding a new arms race, this time in the heavens. So far the Bush administration has declined Chinese and Russian invitations to discuss a treaty banning space weapons. The reasons are many. A ban on the research and development of antisatellite weapons would be impossible to verify. A ban on tests of the sort Chinese has just launched would almost certainly broaden into international efforts to constrain America’s ambitious missile-defense program. (A test missile-launch to destroy an incoming warhead would be essentially indistinguishable from a test-launch to destroy a satellite.)
A final reason for U.S. reluctance has been the fact that the likely forum for any negotiations: the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, is an unwieldy 65-nation body. Despite such concerns, says Gary Samore, a former defense official on the Clinton-era National Security Council and now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations: “It might be worth seeing if we could get together with the half-dozen or so nations that have real space capabilities, to see if we could all agree to either tacit or explicit measures to constrain antisatellite work. We haven’t tried that approach yet.”
The top priority could be a basic agreement addressing the danger of space debris from pulverized satellites, which is part of the reason Washington and Moscow ceased further testing of ASAT systems two decades ago. Now China’s public entry into the antisatellite game has unleashed an estimated two million fragments of debris floating indefinitely in orbit, threatening other satellites, including its own, according to the Union of Concerned Scientistis. Laura Grego, a UCS expert on space-security issues, says: “The issues aren’t simple, but it might be possible, as a first step, to agree on a ban on the testing of destructive antisatellite weapons [of the sort China has just tested]. After all, it’s the debris from that sort of test … which is of immediate concern.” If the United States is unwilling to move toward that first step, China can be expected to keep following in U.S. and Russian footsteps toward the stars—and, if it deems necessary, toward Star Wars.
With Jonathan Adams in Taipei
