In addition to initiating an internal security review, Bolden said he’s also contemplating asking an independent panel to undertake an investigation. In addition, he ordered a moratorium on granting any new access to NASA facilities to people from countries considered to be espionage threats, including China, Burma, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. Existing NASA workers from those countries have also had their ability to access NASA facilities via remote computers temporarily suspended.

The issue is particularly sensitive because NASA has been forbidden by Congress from cooperating with China in space. Wolf himself was the author of a clause included in a U.S. spending bill passed in April 2011 that banned NASA from working with China or Chinese-owned companies on any bilateral projects.

“I don’t deal with China by direction of this Congress,” Bolden said during a separate House hearing with the Science, Space and Technology Committee held yesterday (March 19). He called the prohibition “the elephant in the room” and said, “We’re the only agency of the federal government that does not have bilateral relations with China.”

Friends of Jiang claim that he is simply “an unfortunate political scapegoat”. From Amy Li at the South China Morning Post:

Xing explained that Jiang was not ‘fleeing’ US as reported by some media. Jiang was leaving the US on a one-way ticket after he had learned his contract with Nasa would not be renewed. Jiang was headed back to China to spend time with his family, before reporting to a new job in Europe.

According to an FBI affidavit, when agents asked Jiang what electronic media he had with him during the investigation, Jiang told them he had a mobile phone, a memory stick, an external hard drive and a new computer. But agents later found an extra laptop, an old hard drive and a Sim card.

“From the way FBI agents asked these questions, Jiang could easily have been misled into thinking to mention only the objects in his carry-on, but not his checked-in luggage,” Xing wrote in Jiang’s defence.

“His spoken English isn’t so good, and I wonder if he had explained himself clearly, especially when he could have been really nervous,” Xing added.

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We just undocked a spaceship from our Space Station. The Progress robot ship is loaded with trash, to burn up like a meteorite in 3.5 hrs.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Happy Chinese New Year! May it be filled with joy and success. To celebrate, we sent a Progress spaceship to burn like fireworks in the sky.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Morning clouds cast self-important shadows off the coast of China. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Hangzhou, China. As one of the few space-faring nations, I salute China, her astronauts, and their accomplishments. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Night city in northern China. What could be in the orange box at the top? Can anyone figure it out? twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

Shanghai, China. Home to more than 23 million people. Vibrant, cosmopolitan port at the mouth of the Yangtze River. twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/…

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) February 9, 2013

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The discovery raises questions about procurement practices by U.S. departments responsible for national security. The U.S. government and Congress have raised concerns about Huawei and its alleged ties to the Chinese military and government. The company, the world’s second-largest telecommunications equipment maker, denies its products pose any security risk or that the Chinese military influences its business.

[…] William Plummer, Huawei’s vice president of external affairs in Washington, said in an email to Reuters: “There has never been a shred of substantive proof that Huawei gear is any less secure than that of our competitors, all of which rely on common global standards, supply chains, coding and manufacturing.

“Blackballing legitimate multinationals based on country of origin is reckless, both in terms of fostering a dangerously false sense of cyber-security and in threatening the free and fair global trading system that the U.S. has championed for the last 60-plus years.”

The Economist (via CDT) addressed the Huawei investigation in a pair of articles last August.

In another sign of American wariness, China was specifically excluded last week from the relaxation of export restrictions on communications satellites. From William J. Broad at The New York Times:

The strict export controls arose from a political fight over satellite launchings by China, which in the 1980s began offering cheap rides into orbit on low-cost rockets. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, both Republicans, approved transfers of American spacecraft to Chinese rockets, as did President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Starting in early 1998, a series of upsets brought the expanding trade to a halt. Two American satellite makers involved in the Chinese launchings, Hughes and Loral, were accused of giving China advice about making not only commercial rockets, but also military missiles.

Republicans, who controlled Congress at the time, argued that satellite exports could lead to a hemorrhage of secret materials and information, and said that China might already have stolen encryption secrets.

China responded to its continued exclusion with “grave concern”. From Yang Jingjie at Global Times:

[… T]he relaxation of export controls shut China out by stipulating that no satellites or related items may be exported, re-exported or transferred to China, North Korea or any country that is a state sponsor of terrorism. It prohibits satellites or related items from being launched in those countries, and prohibits those countries from using these items in their launch vehicles. Only the president could waive the prohibition on a case-by-case basis.

In response, China expressed grave concern.

[…] “The Obama administration has made repeated promises to relax high-tech export controls. But it turns out that it has been the strictest,” Zhou Shijian, a senior researcher with the Center for US-China Relations at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

The new rules proposed by some right-wing legislators have in fact labeled China as “an enemy” of the US, Zhou said, noting that even during the Cold War era, the US didn’t stop space cooperation with the former Soviet Union.

China’s satellite programmes, including its Beidou navigation system, do have significant military applications. But congress’ determination to block any cooperation with China in space also has critics in the U.S.: NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao urged a new Sino-American space partnership in 2011; Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell and Joan Johnson-Freese of the Naval War College discussed the loss of “major opportunities” on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last June; and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Frank Klotz suggested in July that cooperation based on the U.S.-Russian model might better “serve long-term American interests”.

Currently, the absence of any established framework for cooperation is complicating Washington’s response to an anticipated Chinese anti-satellite weapon test, rumoured to be scheduled for January 11th. From Gregory Kulacki at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

High-level intervention in both countries is needed to stop the test and start discussions. Remarkably, there are no regular channels of communication on space issues between China and the United States. Congressional opposition to scientific and commercial cooperation with China in space shut down potential talks on human space flight that could have led to a bilateral dialog on space security.

[…] China’s space program is still in the formative stages of its development. Both the United States and the former Soviet Union conducted equally high profile ASAT testing during comparable stages in the development of their space programs, and both eventually decided to stop destructive ASAT testing. Hopefully, China will eventually come to a similar conclusion. Beginning a meaningful bilateral dialog on space security between the United States and China could hasten the day.

A Global Times editorial defended the development of anti-satellite weaponry as necessary “to deter the US from taking risky action against China in this period of great transition”, given its rejection of past olive branches.

China’s public policy is peaceful use of space, which is also China’s real desire. China has no interest in launching a large-scale space race with the US. China and Russia jointly initiated a program to avoid an arm race in outer space in 2008, but this proposal was refused by the US.

Against this background, it is necessary for China to have the ability to strike US satellites. This deterrent can provide strategic protection to Chinese satellites and the whole country’s national security.

[…] In the foreseeable future, gap between China and the US cannot be eliminated by China’s development of space weapons. The US advantage is overwhelming. Before strategic uncertainties between China and the US can disappear, China urgently needs to have an outer space trump card.

[…] Therefore, hopefully, the speculation about China’s anti-satellite tests is true.

American arms sales to China’s neighbours, meanwhile, are “set to boom”, according Reuters’ Jim Wolf, reporting on a forecast by the Aerospace Industries Association.

Fears resulting from China’s growing military spending should lead to enough U.S. sales in South and East Asia to more than offset a slowdown in European arms-buying, according to the forecast.

[…] Overall, the United States reached arms transfer agreements in 2011 totaling $66.3 billion, or nearly 78 percent of all such worldwide pacts, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The 2011 total was swollen by a record $33.4 billion deal with Saudi Arabia. India ranked second with $6.9 billion in such agreements.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers, who consults for U.S. arms makers through BowerGroupAsia, an advisory with 10 offices in the region, predicted Southeast Asian defense budgets would expand steadily as a hedge against Chinese assertiveness in disputes in the South China and East China seas.

[…] The Obama administration says arms sales are an increasingly critical and cost-efficient arrow in its quiver to defend U.S. worldwide interests.

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A spokesman said that Beidou is targeting a 70-80% share of the Chinese market in related location services by 2020.

The China Satellite Navigation Office added that by that time it also intended the service to be available across the globe.

[…] Six satellites are already in orbit, but officials said they planned to add a further 40 to the system over the next decade, according to a report by China Daily.

Organisers have estimated that the market for transport, weather, and telecom spin-off services from Beidou’s signals could be worth 200bn yuan ($32bn; £20bn) by 2015.

However, it is widely thought another motivation for the project is China’s desire not to be reliant on a foreign-operated system that could be turned off at a time of conflict.

The South China Morning Post’s Minnie Chan described Beidou’s international launch as a milestone in China’s campaign to establish an independent navigation system.

Expanding into the Asia-Pacific region – from Afghanistan to the Western Pacific and Mongolia to northern Australia – puts the system on track to claim 15 to 20 per cent of the GPS-dominated domestic market by 2015, said Ran Chengqi , a BDS spokesman and director of the China Satellite Navigation Office.

[…] An early version has been used by traffic control systems in more than 100,000 vehicles in nine provinces and cities.

[…] The central government has spent billions on the system and in the coming decade plans to invest over 40 billion yuan (HK$49 billion) more, Ran said.

[…] An estimated 95 per cent of global-positioning equipment on the mainland still relies on GPS data, Xinhua said.

Global Times described the system as the future “cornerstone of China’s participation in the international advanced technology industry”, and urged its widespread adoption and support:

We […] appeal to Chinese consumers to firmly support BeiDou and be users of this system. BeiDou can represent China’s advanced technology; it has improved the quality of China’s modernization process. Support for Beidou can build the Chinese people’s collective competitiveness.

[…] Some problems may be found in its operation because BeiDou is a new system. Chinese consumers should remain clear-headed regarding our country’s long-term interests, and show tolerance toward the BeiDou system. In the final analysis, the strength of Beidou cannot be separated from broad participation from Chinese society. Besides market users, such participation should also include people supporting our country’s scientific and technological progress.

For China, which has developed later than many other countries, progress means challenging advanced global forces. The success of State-level projects depends on the determination and will of all of society. China’s ability to compete with developed countries in terms of advanced technology is growing. BeiDou is one of China’s players in this competition. All Chinese consumers should applaud it. The whole country backs the development of BeiDou.

‘Beidou’ 北斗 comes from the Chinese name for the Big Dipper or Plough constellation.

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AOL Defense: Cultural bias can result in serious misunderstandings between nations and armies. How does this play into Americans’ perception of China’s military rise, and China’s own perception of its place in world security? In other words, are the U.S. and China “talking past each other” in a military sense?

Erickson: Yes. Never before has the world witnessed the simultaneous presence of a powerful United States and a powerful China, let alone their interaction. Nearly as exceptional is the phenomenon of two great powers in the international system with two very different cultures, political systems, geographic regions and sets of national interests poised to avoid a great power war ….

The fears and aspirations of the United States and China draw on powerful currents of national identity and experience. Consequently, they are easy to reinforce and difficult to moderate. In coming years, driving factors, such as their constant development of new high-end military capabilities, are likely to become more significant.

Lack of strategic transparency and understanding remains a major problem between the U.S. and China. Beijing has traditionally disclosed far less information about the most critical aspects of its military capabilities than has the U.S.; its strategists believe that as the weaker party it must use ambiguity to compensate for technological inferiority.

A section of the interview which gained wider attention focused on practical problems with space-based military assets:

Space … is expensive to enter, hard to sustain assets in, contains no defensive ground, and – barring energy-intensive maneuvering – forces assets into predictable orbits. Moreover, some of the most debilitating asymmetric tactics could be employed against space and cyberspace targets.

David Axe—Erickson’s interviewer at AOL Defense—interpreted this as a recommendation that the US cede space to China altogether, rather than allowing itself to be drawn into competition there. From Wired’s Danger Room national security blog:

No one disputes that China is gaining “ground” in space. “The [People's Liberation Army] is acquiring a range of technologies to improve China’s space and counter-space capabilities,” warned the 2011 edition of Congress’ annual report on the Chinese military (.pdf). But the Pentagon’s official response is to dig in deeper in orbit, with newer and better spacecraft costing at least $10 billion a year, in total. Erickson is virtually alone in fundamentally questioning the Pentagon’s space presence — and recommending an orbital retreat ….

In Erickson’s perfect world, U.S. forces probably wouldn’t rely on space at all. With no one to beat, China wouldn’t lose the new space race. But it wouldn’t win, either.

Erickson, however, rejected this interpretation on his blog:

Space-based platforms should not constitute a disproportionately-increased share of newly-developed assets. For the foreseeable future, however, space will remain indispensable for a variety of reasons. There are many military functions that are best performed from space, particularly to support C4ISR and long-distance power projection. Moreover, space assets can be made more reliable by deployment in smaller packages and dispersed networks as small- and micro-satellites, an effort that the U.S. is already working on and China is pursuing intensively. These types of satellites have lower unit costs, and hence the loss of a given platform could be far less devastating than that of a “Greyhound bus-sized” large satellite. This, coupled with rapid replenishment, could greatly enhance survivability and reduce incentives for attack. The United States, and particularly the U.S. military, should thus NOT remove assets from space or otherwise decrease its presence there—it should rather seek both improved space approaches and supplementary approaches in other domains, and not try to increase space-basing uncritically at the expense of other alternatives ….

China’s military capabilities are improving across the board, with space being a particular “pocket of excellence.” But the United States maintains formidable capabilities here and elsewhere. Despite its current difficulties, it has bright days ahead. There is no need to adopt an “alarmist attitude” that all-out conflict with China is inevitable, or to adopt a “defeatist” attitude that the U.S. has no choice but to abandon its core interests, values, allies, or friends. The U.S. can “win without fighting” in space, by continuing to use it to support military operations, and not accepting limitations on its non-weaponized uses of space to do so. Space is not a sanctuary—U.S. assets there can be attacked by a capable military such as China’s—but China increasingly faces its own vulnerabilities and thus is developing incentives not to attack first in space. Space is thus not a desirable arena of conflict for either great power, and its preservation as a safe environment is in fact in their mutual interest.

Other observers are more interested in cooperation than competition. Asian-American astronaut Leroy Chiao suggests that, with the Shuttle retired, and Russian rockets grounded following a failed launch late last month, China should be invited aboard the International Space Station. From CNN:

What can we do? Are there any other options? Yes: Bring China into the International Space Station program. China is the only other entity besides the U.S. and Russia with a human spaceflight capability. In fact China is, at the moment, the only entity that can launch astronauts into low earth orbit.

Here’s how it might work. NASA would follow the model used to begin work with the Russians in the early 1990s. Technical exchanges of specialists and astronauts would pave the way for developing plans, processes and procedures to allow modification of the Shenzhou spacecraft to rendezvous and dock with the ISS, with joint Chinese, U.S. and Russian crews. The United States would lead these efforts.

There are those who argue against any space cooperation with China, on grounds that the Chinese would obtain technological secrets and capabilities from the U.S. The fact is, nothing of military value would be transferred in either direction, just as such knowledge has not been transferred to or from Russia as a result of the positive and successful collaboration in our civil space programs. China would only learn from us about how to operate with a civil space station.

For now, however, a sense of competitiveness remains as America’s space program stalls and China’s continues to gather momentum. This shone through in one recent report on two Tsinghua physicists’ proposal to capture and mine a near-Earth asteroid:

The Chinese … seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon. The orbit would be unstable, and eventually (after a few years) the asteroid would head back out into space from whence it came, but it would stick there long enough for us to poke around on it.

Then what? Well, there’s science to be done of course, but they estimate that a two-kilometer-wide metallic asteroid (about 1.2 miles across) could be worth something like 25 trillion dollars, which would handily pay down the entire U.S. national debt with barely enough left over to restart the space shuttle program. Sweet! Except, sweet for China. Not us. Oh well.

Sources:

China’s ‘Ripples of Capability’ – AOL Defense
China Analyst: U.S. Can’t Win in Space, So Why Bother Racing? – Danger Room – Wired.com
The U.S. Must Continue to Use Space and Can “Win without Fighting” There—It’s Just Not a Panacea, a Sanctuary, or a Desirable Battlefield – Andrew S. Erickson
Make China our new partner in space – CNN.com
Chinese want to capture an asteroid into Earth’s orbit – DVICE

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China is still far behind the U.S. in space technology and experience, but what it doesn’t lack is a plan or financial resources. While U.S. programs can fall victim to budgetary worries or a change of government, rapidly growing China appears to have no such constraints.

“One of the biggest advantages of their system is that they have five-year plans so they can develop well ahead,” said Peter Bond, consultant editor for Jane’s Space Systems and Industry. “They are taking a step-by-step approach, taking their time and gradually improving their capabilities. They are putting all the pieces together for a very capable, advanced space industry.” […]

China’s space station is slated to open around 2020, the same year the International Space Station is scheduled to close. If the U.S. and its partners don’t come up with a replacement, China could have the only permanent human presence in the sky ….

Some elements of China’s program, notably the firing of a ground-based missile into one of its dead satellites four years ago, have alarmed American officials and others who say such moves could set off a race to militarize space. That the program is run by the military has made the U.S. reluctant to cooperate with China in space, even though the latter insists its program is purely for peaceful ends.

The Financial Times notes that, according to a new report from the World Security Institute, the PLA’s satellite surveillance capabilities are rapidly catching up with those of the US:

“Starting from almost no live surveillance capability 10 years ago, today the PLA has likely equalled the US’s ability to observe targets from space for some real-time operations,” two of the institute’s China researchers, Eric Hagt and Matthew Durnin, write in the Journal of Strategic Studies.

China warned the US last month not to become involved in its dispute with Vietnam over the South China Sea. “[China’s] strategic priority is to keep the US out of its backyard,” Mr Durnin told the Financial Times, adding that the satellite technology needed for achieving that goal is now in place.

When China tested missiles near Taiwan in 1996, the US deployed two aircraft carriers to nearby waters. The PLA’s inability to locate the ships was a source of great embarrassment that helped spur China’s satellite programme.

“The United States has always felt that if there was a crisis in Taiwan, we could get our naval forces there before China could act and before they would know we were there. This basically takes that off the table,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island.

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China’s keystone space scientist Qian Xuesen, widely acclaimed as the country’s “father of space technology” and “king of rocketry”, died of illness here Saturday morning at the age of 98.

In 1956, based on Qian’s position paper on the country’s defense and aviation industry, the central government set up an aviation industry committee, which later became the leading organization for China’s missile and aviation programs.

Under the guidance of Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, China finished the blueprint on developing jet and rocket technology. He also played a significant role in developing the country’s first artificial earth satellite.

“Mr. Qian used to hold academic seminars for us. We exchanged scientific ideas and wrote articles together. The whole time when we worked with Mr. Qian had a great influence on us,” Yu Jingyuan, a senior researcher with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation told Xinhua Saturday afternoon on hearing the news.

See a set of photos of Qian’s life, via Global Times.

[Update]: But in the Chinese blogosphere, bloggers have raised other issues about Dr. Qian Xueshen. Being one of the top scientists in the PRC, Dr. Qian wrote several articles and “papers” in 1958 and 1959 which “accurately proved” that grain production could be “585,000″ Jin/mu. ( ~ 530.72 kilogram/square meters)

Qian’s article, by a top scientist in China, appealed to the political leaders at that time, and (according to the memoir of Li Rui, (Mao Zedong’s former secretary) Mao Zedong used Qian’s “proof” to support his “Great Leap Forward” policy which resulted in a national famine, causing over thirty million deaths.

An article by Qian Xueshen in China Youth Daily, June 16, 1958 about the grain yield

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New alarms are sounding over signs that China may be developing space weapons, reinforcing suspicions that the People’s Liberation Army is increasingly interested in the final frontier as a theater of war.

The latest alert came Thursday from an independent panel – created by Congress to assess the economic and security situations in China – that questions Chinese intentions and urges lawmakers to lean on the Bush administration to talk with Beijing about curtailing space militarization.

Specifically, the annual report of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission urges the US to emphasize to China the merits of “strategic warning and verification measures” – in essence, the value to both sides of leaving early-warning and spy satellites unharmed. [Full Text]

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