The Chinese Military’s Skyrocketing Influence in Space

The PLA shares similar sentiments about the role of space in potential future conflicts. The 2020 edition of the PLA’s Science of military strategy (战略学) says what happens in space is ‘inseparable from the outcome of the war’. The PLA regards space power as ‘not only the glue of the modern integrated battlefield, but also the glue of the modern military power system’. Both the US and China recognise space as highly contested and requiring superiority.

The American-owned GPS is a free service and remains the world’s leading navigation system—the consequences of its disruption would ripple around the globe. However, the rapid growth of China’s space capabilities has included its own positioning and navigation system, the BeiDou satellite system, which the deputy director of the China Satellite Navigation Office, Chen Gucang, regards as comparable to, if not better than, GPS. BeiDou, too, is marketed as a system developed by China and  generously ‘dedicated to the world’ in conjunction with the Belt and Road Initiative.

In 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite test, blowing up one of its old weather satellites and creating a cloud of space debris that persists to this day. In an interview with Sinica, NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao, an expert on China’s space program, described the event as an act of defiance against US attempts to maintain amicable space conditions by reserving the right to deny space access to anyone it feels is a threat. While condemned globally at the time, this action revealed the extent of PLA counterspace capabilities and its efforts to militarize space alongside the US.

And with plans to put the first taikonaut on the moon by 2030 and to surpass American space programs by 2045, China has no intention of slowing down. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2023 threat assessment declares that ‘China’s space activities are designed to advance its global standing and strengthen its attempts to erode US influence across military, technological, economical, and diplomatic spheres’. Simply put, it’s plausible that the US could cede space dominance to China given the current trajectory of the PLA’s space efforts.

The security implications of this could be far-reaching. Secretary of the US Air Force Frank Kendall notes that the linking of China’s space-based capabilities to its operational forces, and its growing ability to use its satellites to track US troops and assets, may enable the PLA to invasively collect intelligence from space without any nation being powerful enough to stop them.

From Beijing’s perspective, space activity is a clear way to further China’s socialist modernisation. It also reflects the PLA’s military–civil fusion strategy, which aims to utilize civilian research to enhance and revitalize the PLA by 2049. Retired US Lieutenant Colonel Thomas McCabe has written that ‘all the surveillance resources PRC civilian agencies have will be integrated into crisis/wartime military ISR [intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance]’. This effect may be executed through the employment of anti-access and area-denial techniques, which China has already proved itself capable of with its grey-zone warfare against Taiwan.

This is just the beginning. Societies would do well to monitor the progress of countries, particularly China, as they leverage the final frontier for political and strategic objectives. Without closely following this activity, governments and peoples may mistake China’s development in space as incremental instead of the skyrocketing growth it is. While PLA capabilities do not yet allow China to replace the US as the leading space power, they are rapidly expanding, alongside the threat they pose to international peace and security. Recognizing the massive advantages space capabilities can provide is only the first step in protecting this domain from falling into the wrong hands.

Ashley Lin is a cadet at the US Air Force Academy and conducted the research for this article during a placement at ASPI. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).