China's Space Ambitions

China's Space Ambitions

A peaceful lunar probe is a welcome change from its military pursuits.

 From the Wall Street Journal

China's first lunar probe touched down over the weekend and deployed an endearingly named rover, Jade Rabbit. Congratulations are in order for this space success, all the more so because it was a peaceful exploration mission. The U.S. and Soviet Union first conducted these moon probe landings as long ago as the 1960s, but mankind in general should benefit from more such risk-taking.

The mission is also welcome because it contrasts with what has been Beijing's rush to use space as a military battlefield. China has launched a fleet of surveillance satellites and developed the ability to destroy the satellites of other nations. It is developing these capabilities as an integral part of its strategy to keep U.S. forces from aiding allies in the East and South China Seas.

In military parlance, that is known as "anti-access/area denial" capacity. China's leaders realized the importance of satellites after a military standoff near its coast in March 1996. Then U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered two aircraft carrier battle groups near the Taiwan Strait in a show of support for the island's de facto independence. The People's Liberation Army lacked the capacity to find the carriers or the weapons to target them.

Beijing accelerated its military modernization program, relying in large part on technology stolen from the U.S. and bought from Russia, and this effort began to bear fruit in the mid-2000s. For satellites, 2010 was a pivotal year as China more than doubled its launch rate and equalled the U.S. in the number of military satellites put into orbit, the first nation to have done so. While the quality of those satellites is not as high as America's, they are believed to be capable of locating an aircraft carrier.

Beijing has also used its space capabilities to develop a carrier-killer: the antiship ballistic missile. The U.S. acknowledged three years ago that this weapon is operational, if not fully deployed. This is part of a layered defense that increases the risks for U.S. carriers policing the Western Pacific sea lanes.

Space is the perfect environment for asymmetric warfare, which is central to Beijing's military strategy. With a relatively modest investment, China has developed the capacity to destroy expensive satellites that the U.S. military relies on for its own targeting as well as command and control. In 2007, China successfully tested an interceptor on one of its weather satellites. Three years later, it maneuvered one satellite close to another, and in July this year it launched three more maneuverable satellites that could be used to destroy enemy surveillance or communications.

The Jade Rabbit is a reminder that China is pushing aggressively into space, and it would help the world if its leaders saw this as mainly a science frontier. But with so much of America's technology dependent on satellites, Washington will have to pay close attention to China's military ambitions too.