JOSEPH KAHN
NY
Times
Saturday, January 20, 2007
China’s apparent success in destroying one of its own
orbiting satellites with a ballistic missile signals that its
rising military intends to contest American supremacy in space,
a realm many here consider increasingly crucial to national security.
The test of an antisatellite weapon last week, which Beijing
declined to confirm or deny Friday despite widespread news coverage
and diplomatic inquiries, was perceived by East Asia experts as
China’s most provocative military action since it testfired
missiles off the coast of Taiwan more than a decade ago.
Unlike in the Taiwan exercise, the message this time was directed
mainly at the United States, the sole superpower in space.
With lengthy white papers, energetic diplomacy and generous aid
policies, Chinese officials have taken pains in recent years to
present their country as a new kind of global power that, unlike
the United States, has only good will toward other nations.
But some analysts say the test shows that the reality is more
complex. China has surging national wealth, legitimate security
concerns and an opaque military bureaucracy that may belie the
government’s promise of a “peaceful rise.”
“This is the other face of China, the hard power side that
they usually keep well hidden,” said Chong-Pin Lin, an expert
on China’s military in Taiwan. “They talk more about
peace and diplomacy, but the push to develop lethal, high-tech
capabilities has not slowed down at all.”
Japan, South Korea and Australia are among the countries in the
region that pressed China to explain the test, which if real would
make it the third power, after the United States and the Soviet
Union, to shoot down an object in space.
China’s Foreign and Defense Ministries declined to comment
on reports of the test, which were based on United States intelligence
data. Liu Jianchao, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, would say
only that China opposed using weapons in space. “China will
not participate in any kind of arms race in outer space,”
he told Reuters.
China’s silence on the test underscores how much its rapidly
modernizing military — perhaps especially the Second Artillery
forces, in charge of its ballistic missile program — remains
isolated and secretive, answering only to President Hu Jintao,
who heads the military as well as the ruling Communist Party.
Having a weapon that can disable or destroy satellites is considered
a component of China’s unofficial doctrine of asymmetrical
warfare. China’s army strategists have written that the
military intends to use relatively inexpensive but highly disruptive
technologies to impede the better-equipped and better-trained
American forces in the event of an armed conflict — over
Taiwan, for example.
The Pentagon makes extensive use of satellites for military communications,
intelligence and missile guidance, and some Chinese experts have
argued that damaging its space-based satellite infrastructure
could hobble American forces.
Yet while China’s research and development of such weapons
has been well known, the apparent decision to test-fire an antisatellite
weapon came as a surprise to many analysts.
“If this is fully corroborated, it is a very significant
event that is likely to recast relations between the United States
and China,” said Allan Behm, a former official in Australia’s
Defense Ministry. “This was a very sophisticated thing to
do, and the willingness to do it means that we’re seeing
a different level of threat.”
China’s military expenditures have been growing at nearly
a double-digit pace, even after adjusting for inflation, for 15
years. China has begun to deploy sophisticated submarines, aircraft
and antiship missiles that the Pentagon says could have offensive
uses.
Yet with a few notable exceptions, Beijing has avoided sharp
provocations that could prompt the United States or Japan to focus
more on what some officials in each country regard as a potential
threat.
Chinese leaders emphasize that they are preoccupied with domestic
challenges and intend to focus their energy and resources on economic
development, a policy they say depends heavily on cross-border
investment, open trade and friendly foreign relations.
The country has denied that it intends to develop space weapons
and sharply criticized the United States for experimenting with
a space-based missile defense system. It forged a coalition of
Asian countries to jointly develop peaceful space-based technologies.
Last month it published and heavily promoted a white paper on
military strategy that emphasized its view that space must remain
weapon-free. “China is unflinching in taking the road of
peaceful development and always maintains that outer space is
the common wealth of mankind,” the paper said.
Some of such talk amounts to little more than propaganda. But
Jonathan Pollack, a China specialist at the Naval War College
in Newport, R.I., says the Chinese military does in fact act cautiously
when it comes to improving its strategic capabilities, like long-range
missiles and nuclear weapons, to avoid causing alarm in the United
States.
“They have talked about antisatellite weapons,” he
said. “But we have always thought that the threat was ambiguous
and that China probably wanted it that way. So what was the calculation
to go ahead with an actual test?”
Some analysts suggested that one possible motivation was to prod
the Bush administration to negotiate a treaty to ban space weapons.
Russia and China have advocated such a treaty, but President Bush
rejected those calls when he authorized a policy that seeks to
preserve “freedom of action” in space.
Chinese officials have warned that an arms race could ensue if
Washington did not change course.
At a United Nations conference in Vienna last June on uses of
space, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Tang Guoqiang, called
the policies of “certain nations” disconcerting.
“Outer space is the common heritage of mankind, and weaponization
of outer space is bound to trigger off an arms race, thus rendering
outer space a new arena for military confrontation,” he
said, according to an official transcript of his remarks.
Even so, Mr. Pollack, of the Naval War College, said that if
China hoped that demonstrating a new weapon of this kind would
prompt a positive response in Washington, they most likely miscalculated.
“Very frankly, many people in Washington will find that
this validates the view of a China threat,” Mr. Pollack
said. “It could well end up backfiring and forcing the U.S.
to take new steps to counter China.”
Other analysts said the test might have more to do with proving
a technology under development for many years than a cold-war-style
negotiating tactic.
China maintains a minimal nuclear arsenal that could inflict
enough damage on an enemy to guard against any pre-emptive strike,
these analysts said. But the increasing sophistication of American
missile interceptors, which are linked to satellite surveillance,
threatens the viability of China’s limited nuclear arsenal,
some in Beijing have argued.
That may have prompted the Second Artillery to show that it had
the means to protect fixed missile sites and ensure China’s
retaliatory capacity by showing that it could take out American
satellites.
At the annual military fair in Zhuhai, held in November, the
Guangdong-based newspaper Information Times and several other
state-run media outlets carried a short interview with an unidentified
military official boasting that China had “already completely
ensured that it has second-strike capability.” The analyst
said China could protect its retaliatory forces because it could
destroy satellites in space.
American officials have also noted the development. This month,
Lt. Gen. Michael Mapes of the Army testified before Congress that
China and Russia were working on systems to hit American satellites
with lasers or missiles. And over the summer, the director of
the National Reconnaissance Office, Donald M. Kerr, told reporters
that the Chinese had used a ground-based laser to “paint,”
or illuminate, an American satellite, a possible first step to
using lasers to destroy satellites.
“China is becoming more assertive in just about every military
field,” said Mr. Behm, the Australian expert. “It
is not going to concede that the U.S. can be the hegemon in space
forever.”
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