From Reuters, via ABC News:
China said on Tuesday it had shot down one of its own satellites, confirming U.S. reports, but denied it was threatening an arms race in space.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said he knew of no plans for a second test, adding his government had briefed the United States, Japan and other countries some time after the aging weather satellite was hit on January 11.
Those countries have voiced worries about dangerous space debris and escalating military rivalry in space, but Liu said such fears were groundless.
“This test was not directed at any country and does not constitute a threat to any country,” he told a regular news briefing.
“What needs to be stressed is that China has always advocated the peaceful use of space, opposes the weaponization of space and arms races in space.”
Liu said he had not “heard of plans for a second test.” [Full Text]
– Also Wall Street Journal’s opinion China’s Gift:
The Bush administration is sounding a muted alarm over China’s destruction, by means of an adapted ballistic missile, of an old weather satellite 530 miles up in space. We’d be better off treating the Jan. 11 test as a rare and useful gift. Wittingly or not, the Chinese have put paid to four decades of wishful thinking about the militarization of space — and what America should do about it.
That wishful thinking was nicely captured by a statement put out last week by the left-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists: “The development and use of ASAT [anti-satellite] weapons,” it declared, “threatens to undermine relationships and fuel military tension between space faring nations.” The group urged the U.S. “to enter international discussions to develop rules guiding the use of space and to ban the testing and use of destructive ASAT weapons.”
… The Chinese also seem to have fielded ground-based laser systems similar to the one Congress tried to quash in 1985. Last September a report surfaced in Defense News that the Chinese had aimed the lasers at U.S. satellites.
