Posted on 01/23/2007 12:07:39 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -
China has sent men into orbit and launched dozens of satellites, but its test of a satellite-killing weapon is shaking up perceptions about where the Chinese space program is headed.
The test, confirmed by Beijing on Tuesday after nearly a two-week silence, has drawn criticism from the U.S. and Japan, and touched off fears of an arms race in space.
The Chinese test "was an overtly military, very provocative event that cannot be spun any other way," said Rob Hewson, the London-based editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "So a bald assessment of that is that it's a big fat challenge."
The test is a shot across the bow of U.S. efforts to remain predominant in space and on the ground, where its military is heavily dependent on networks of satellites, particularly the low-altitude imaging intelligence models that help it find and hit targets. Japan, also seen as a regional rival, is similarly vulnerable, while any potential conflicts in space would put much of the industrialized world's economies at risk, given that satellites are used to relay phone calls and data and to map weather systems.
The Jan. 11 test, first reported last week by the magazine Aviation Week, destroyed a defunct Chinese weather satellite by hitting it with a warhead launched on board a ballistic missile. That made China only the third country after Russia and the U.S. to shoot down anything in space.
Before that, China's military and its space program were largely seen as capable, but lagging in innovation. Still, its unclear what message China intended to send, underscoring the opacity of China's space and military programs and deepening suspicion over its avowed commitment to the purely peaceful use of space.
Beijing has repeatedly pledged peaceful development of its army - the world's largest - but has caused unease among its neighbors by announcing double-digit military spending increases nearly every year since the early 1990s.
The anti-satellite test threatens to "undermine relationships and fuel military tensions between space-faring nations," David Wright, of the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement posted on the group's Web site that was typical of criticisms from the U.S. scientific community.
On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said it acknowledged holding the test to the U.S., Japan and other countries, but insisted it opposed any arms race in space. Both Washington and Tokyo have criticized the test as undermining efforts to keep weapons out of space.
In Washington, the Defense Department and President Bush's National Security Council declined to comment Tuesday.
However, while China's act looked aggressive, some U.S. officials were skeptical that Beijing would do anything to attack the satellites of the United States or Japan - key trading partners. According to the CIA World Fact Book, China sold more to the United States in 2005 than any other nation - 21.4 percent of its exports. Hong Kong was second, with 16.3 percent, and Japan was third with 11 percent.
China has released no details publicly, although Aviation Week said the missile lifted off from or near the Xichang base in southwest China, the country's main commercial satellite launch center. The military's missile corps, the 2nd Artillery, likely took part in the launch as well.
Knocking out U.S. military satellites would be a priority in any regional war against the U.S. or Japan, either over Taiwan or other territorial claims, or to keep its sea lanes open for deliveries of oil and gas.
One immediate casualty of the test could be budding ties between the Chinese and the U.S. and European space programs, experts said. NASA's chief administrator Michael Griffin visited China last year to discuss cooperation projects, and China has partnered with the European Space Agency on the Galileo navigation satellite network to compete with the U.S. Global Positioning System.
Now the test "will make it very difficult for the U.S. to talk about space cooperation with China any time soon," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense, security and space intelligence consultancy based in Alexandria, Va.
Some say China isn't the only one rushing to acquire military capabilities in space.
President Bush signed an order in October tacitly asserting the U.S. right to space weapons and opposing the development of treaties or other measures restricting them - a move some analysts speculated may have helped spur the Chinese test.
Bush has also pushed an ambitious program of space-based missile defense and the Pentagon is working on missiles, ground lasers and other technology to shoot down satellites.
However, the Pentagon's budget is severely constrained by Iraq and Afghanistan and a drive to replace outdated planes and ships, making space programs a lower priority and prompting some to warn the U.S. could be losing ground in space.
"We are falling behind, if not losing, on many measures of space superiority," Defense Department contractor Stephen Hill said Monday at a forum in Washington.
China's promotion of anti-satellite weapons is underpinned by its doctrine of "asymmetric warfare" that envisions defeating the U.S. or another powerful foe by knocking away key capabilities rather than through frontal assault.
Anti-satellite weapons development has likely benefited from the increasing attention garnered by China's space program, which entered a new era with its first manned space flight in 2003.
A second mission in 2005 put two astronauts, or "yuhangyuan," into orbit for a week and a third manned launch is planned for next year. This year, China plans to put into space a lunar probe which will orbit the moon at an altitude of 125 miles.
Despite the successes, China's space program had been seen as lacking in innovation, overly cautious and, perhaps most importantly, non-threatening to Washington. That evaluation may now have to change.
"You could argue that China is getting ready to do a lot of things that the U.S. is now losing the ability to do," Hewson said. "So that in itself is a challenge to the U.S."
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Bookmarking for later. Celestia objects to be made ....
That's an old talking point used by the same type of people who said the Soviet Union was going to win the Cold War.
I'm not talking about incremental change. Radical change has occured in China in the past ten years. In Beijing in 2003 I was able to buy western books, newspapers, and news magazines. I watched MSNBC on cable--not in a hotel, in a private home. I visited two separate art gallaries displaying pro-freedom exhibits. I saw shopping malls and supermarkets filled with western goods and foods. Beijing and Singapore are both vibrant cities--more like Chicago or New York than one would ever believe.
Are there Marxist dinosaurs remaining in the government? Sure. But China today is no more a Marxist nation than Canada. Does the government remain authoritarian? Sure, but considering the nations diverse and massive population, this is no surprise.
China is not going anywhere and war with her is unthinkable and unnecessary. So, "here's to" a future of positive Sino-American relations.
You'll get none of that here. Doesn't mean I don't think that a manned mission to Mars is basically a waste of time and government money, especially if it diverts resources from space-based defense programs.
Pre-censored "Asian" versions. The MSM is a willing accomplice to this. So don't tell us anything has changed...if anything, it proves that their communist encroachments on our liberties are growing.
I watched MSNBC on cable--not in a hotel, in a private home.
??? Soooooo? As shown here, the Chi-Comms needn't censor their own henchmen already running that outfit, to wit:
Nope. Their slaves are kept in the mud. Only the Chi-Comm princelings are rising.
If you don't think the changes I cited in Chinese society are significant, then there's simply no basis for further discussion. Of course censorship is used in China, but far far less than in earlier decades. My goodness, Canada even censors its news media and restricts its citizens access to various types of books.
"Nope. Their slaves are kept in the mud. Only the Chi-Comm princelings are rising."
You really don't know what you're talking about, do you?
Have you been to China? Do you know any Chinese people? Do you know that unlike 30 years ago, Chinese citizens are free to leave the country? Travel where they like? Do you know that during the first weeks of the Iraq war, Chinese citizens could turn on their TVs and hear western journalists--and President Bush himself--outline the reasons for the war?
As I've said, China is not a democratic utopia, but it is a great place for those with a reasonable education to work and live. Considering the tremendous poverty that still exists there, the country is making great strides.
Again devoid of reality. They have declared us the "Main Enemy" and are gearing up to attack us.
Your wishful thinking is Liberal Apeasement to the hilt.
Nobody who believes in Communist appeasement the way you do...denying their communist nature (80% of the populace is still in the "old economy") can claim to be serious. Read their constitution sometime: It is not debatable what they really are. And you are off base about their intentions. Get serious about China's Rising Military. Don't be easily duped by the Panda-Hugger lobby.
I strongly suggest you listen to better conservatives and supporters of liberty:
The late Constantine Menges, for example, in China: The Rising Threat. (2005) lays out the stubborn facts you fail to comprehend.
Constantine Menges, in his book "China: the Gathering Threat," warned that China is pursuing a stealthy, systematic strategy to obtain geopolitical and economic dominance and that America could be embroiled in a showdown with China in this decade. Menges, as a special assistant to President Reagan, played a key role in the downfall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.Dr. Menges told us that China has been and remains, along with Russia, the leading supplier of weapons of mass destruction to North Korea, Iran, Syria, Libya and Cuba. In his book, Menges tells us that China is capable of launching nuclear missiles in thirty minutes that can kill Americans. He tells us, "The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) defines the U.S. as the main enemy."
And what about the Cox Report? Has the Administration forgotten or bothered to read this report that unanimously found that the PRC has stolen design information on our most advanced thermonuclear weapons, that the next generation of such weapons will exploit elements and that their penetration of our national labs spans several decades and most certainly continues today?
In a foreword to the Cox Report, Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, a patriot to the core, wrote the following: "Communist China's long march against the U.S. is as tenacious as it is diverse – from campaign contributions used to influence in the White House, purchasing an interest in American corporations, hi-tech spying, to old-fashioned military buildup threats."
Weinberger recalls the words of Chinese General Xiong Guangkai, who in 1995 told an American official that the PRC would call the shots in the Asian theater "because in the end the U.S. cares a lot more about Los Angeles than it does about Taipei."
The Cox Report uncovered espionage by agents of the PRC that Weinberger charges is "the most serious breach of national security since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg betrayed our atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and Aldridge Ames sold us out." The Rosenbergs paid with their lives. The crimes uncovered by the Cox Report have yet to be redressed.
Constantine Menges, now deceased, offered these recommendations on how to confront China's gathering threat. In his book he adheres to what President Reagan, with Dr. Menges advising him, used as a guiding strategy to bring down the Soviet Union. The U.S., says Dr. Menges, should:
1. "Start telling the truth about Communist China;2. maintain Cold War alliances both economic and strategic, and seek a new defensive alliance with India and its population of 1.1 billion;
3. shift trade opportunities in Asia from China to American allies and security partners;
4. and most urgent: the U.S. [should] move from intention to actual deployment of national and regional missile defenses."
Most Americans don't know we are unprotected from the growing threat of a missile attack. The fallout from this delay in preparedness could be an enormous loss of life.
Additionally, we must maintain the integrity and control over classified information within the U.S. government and among all contractors with sensitive military technology information, significantly improve and expand our U.S. counterintelligence, and expel from the U.S. companies that function as fronts for any military or intelligence-related entities in China, Russia, or any other non-allied state.
Wes Vernon, brilliant Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist, has brought our attention to Dr. Constantine Menges' documents. Vernon tells us, "China's potential to do harm to the U.S. is in a category all by itself if for no other reason than it has neutralized so much of America's business and policymaking sectors."
Wes Vernon told Weinberger, "The Clinton administration perpetrated some of the worst, most damaging national security decisions of the 20th century."
And now Hillary Clinton wants us to believe that cozying up to Red China is a new phenomenon that just emerged since her husband departed the White House. She recently warned: "We are giving up our fiscal sovereignty to China. How do you get tough with your banker?" This, after the Clinton regime gave the Chinese the political and economic keys to the White House and accepted campaign money from Communist Chinese sources.
The warnings are here, spoken from the grave by Dr. Constantine Menges. Think again before claiming that China is not a military threat to the U.S
So all the social, political, and economic liberalization going on in China is "just clever trick! Fool White Devil!"
You seem to only be able to respond with cold war propaganda. Certainly someone in China can find similarly threatening words written by some American military thinkers.
China does not wish to rule the world or even to spread "communism." China, I assume, does wish to have a sphere of influence in Asia and wishes the US to desist from challenging that sphere. This kind of clash can certainly be handled diplomatically over time and I look forward to the day when China-US relationships are not so unlike those we maintain with most of the world's other republics.
As I said before, war with China is unthinkable and unwinnable. Fortunately, most American leaders now realize this.
Talking about yourself I see.
Have you been to China?
No. But I know many who have. And I have close friends there right now. And they have apparently dug deeper...and more skeptically... than you did
Do you know any Chinese people?
Yes. Many. The issue is, do you? Do you know how you are being played for a sap? Do you ever get a way from your "handlers"? I doubt it. You're still driven everywhere you go by a native.
Do you know that unlike 30 years ago, Chinese citizens are free to leave the country? Travel where they like?
Misrepresentation.
80% need political permission from their "work unit"... they aren't in those cities. Nor can thy move to them. Still. The ones who made it out are a select bunch. The PLA, "students" (spies) and New Economy bunches. Things have been made "easier" FOR THEM...but that is not the equivalent of "freedom" for all Chinese to leave or go where they like. The Ministry of Public Security amended their rules so that by 2005:
Chinese citizens in large and medium-sized cities who want to go abroad [forget the 80% of the populace] will be able to get a passport merely by presenting their identity cards and household registration documents to the proper authorities.Since the vast majority of Chinese are still in the rural "Old Economy" zones, these rules remain very much in force against them.While currently, a Chinese citizen must go through complicated formalities when applying for a passport, including getting approval from his or her work unit, and producing household registration documents and other identification materials.
Is the Roman Catholic Church allowed to exist there yet?
You think the ChiComs would defeat our military?
You said it, I didn't.
You seem to only be able to respond with cold war propaganda.
Not propaganda. Facts. Facts that undoes your little spiel.
Certainly someone in China can find similarly threatening words written by some American military thinkers.
Nuts. This wasn't a mere military thinker. This was their equivalent of "king of the mountain".
China does not wish to rule the world or even to spread "communism."
B.S. Chavez and Castro are pretty happy with Communist China's faithfulness to its ideology...which is apparently more nuanced than you can quite discern.
China, I assume, does wish to have a sphere of influence in Asia and wishes the US to desist from challenging that sphere.
Yup. Stay out of our "lebensraum".
Not quite so innocuous or non-threatening as you imply. Your escalating shrillness to apologize for their Chi-Comm regimes implies that you have been coopted.
This kind of clash can certainly be handled diplomatically over time and I look forward to the day when China-US relationships are not so unlike those we maintain with most of the world's other republics.
Dream on. So long as the Chi-Comms are not toppled, it will never be a safe or normal "relationship".
As I said before, war with China is unthinkable and unwinnable.
Except and unless the Chinese think they can win. Then its okay, eh?
Fortunately, most American leaders now realize this.
Oh, so now you are advocating American "acceptance of the inevitable"? Thus, you migrate from being appeasement advocate to an outright collaborator.
Pardon me if we reject your policy advice on China and the condition of thinking of most "American" leaders...and you seem to forget who really runs this country. And it isn't those "leaders". Its the People. And they apparently have more gut-sense what is going on than the ivory-tower dupes who get fat teaching contracts in Communist China.
I will leave you with a pertinent conservative lesson on our Constitutional Government framework, which you apparently never learned, and given by the best teacher we have had in my lifetime:
Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: "We the people." "We the people" tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. "We the people" are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the people" tell the government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past eight years.
Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, January 11, 1989
Your posts are total bullsh*t and, though easily refutable (for example, Castro, I'm sure, is also quite satisfied with Canadian socialism), it would take too much of my valuable time to respond further to your paranoia.
But just to rub it in, I'll finish by saying that China is a great nation and it's in both our nations' interests to live in peaceful partnership.
If they were in fact peaceful. And in fact a "partnership."
But the "relationship" you are shrilly defending is manifestly one-sided and a sham.
As admitted here by Former Defense Minister Chi Haotian:
One time, some Americans came to visit and tried to convince us that the relationship between China and United States is one of interdependence. Comrade Xiaoping replied in a polite manner: “Go tell your government, China and the United States do not have such a relationship that is interdependent and mutually reliant.” Actually, Comrade Xiaoping was being too polite, he could have been more frank, “The relationship between China and United States is one of a life-and-death struggle.” Of course, right now it is not the time to openly break up with them yet....We also must never forget what Comrade Xiaoping emphasized “refrain from revealing the ambitions and put others off the track.” The hidden message is: we must put up with America; we must conceal our ultimate goals, hide our capabilities and await the opportunity. In this way, our mind is clear.
And methinks like Lady MacBeth...you doth protest too much with your "paranoia" claims... further confirming my claim:
"Not quite so innocuous or non-threatening as you imply. Your escalating shrillness to apologize for the Chi-Comm regime implies that you have been coopted."Anytime the Appeasers reach for the aspersion "paranoid" to attack American defenders...you know precisely who and what they are. And they are quick to equate the U.S. and Chinese government positions, claiming moral relativism. As you did, e.g.,
Certainly someone in China can find similarly threatening words written by some American military thinkers.
Blame America first. Your real creed.
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