In Space, China Seeks Galactic Hegemony

For the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the main goal for its investments in outer space is as simple as it is portentous: victory.  As the CCP has set the goal of having the dominant military power on Earth by 2049, it also wants to be the dominant terrestrial power in space.

In the mid-1980s, former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping charged China’s technologists with devising a path to space.  From its beginning, China’s space program has been controlled by the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), yielding dual-use benefits from its unmanned and manned programs.

In 1989, the CCP survived the only significant internal challenge to its rule — from a national upsurge of democracy and accountability protesters fueled by a growing knowledge of the West’s freedoms — culminating in the Tiananmen Massacre. In the aftermath, the CCP decided regime survival required reform for rapid growth at home, and the status gained from power projection abroad — not only domination of Eurasia, but a global capacity to match its main rival, the U.S.

By 1992 or thereabouts, the CCP appears to have also decided that hegemony on Earth was insufficient; it had to achieve hegemony over the heavens as well.  That year, the “921 Program” set out three major goals: devise working rocket transport to space; begin exploration of the Moon; and build a large space station.

In 1999 China had launched its 3-passenger Shenzhou spaceship, a modified copy of the Russian Soyuz, and by 2020 it had tested its 6-passenger successor.  China launched its first Moon fly-by Moon probe Chang’e-1 in 2007; its first Moon lander Chang’e-3 in 2013, and the Chang’e-5 Moon sample-return mission was completed in December 2020.  In April 2021 China is expected to launch its first module of its Tiangong three-crew space station to be completed in 2022.

By 2021, a little over three decades from its beginnings, China turned a space program intended to match that of Russia and the U.S., into a space strategy designed to ensure that the CCP dominates the coming age of the “Space Economy,” that in turn will determine political-economic preeminence on Earth.

The CCP has decided that investments in space power will become a primary engine for scientific discovery and technological breakthroughs to sustain China’s dominant economic power on Earth.  Like many other nations, the CCP realizes that for coming generations, leadership and dominance of the “Space Economy” will determine primacy on Earth.

Numerous reports and statements by Chinese government space and space industry officials have revealed that in the 2020s and beyond China’s space program will grow exponentially, to occupy the Moon, then Mars, nearby asteroids, and to the moons of Jupiter by the mid-2030s.

To achieve these goals China will build its Long March-9 super heavy-lift space launch vehicle (SLV) that can loft 140 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and perhaps over 200 tons with later versions.  There will eventually be “reusable” versions of this SLV, providing competition to the Starship of the U.S. private sector SpaceX Corporation.  By 2040 China plans to master space nuclear propulsion powerful enough to halve the time needed for Chinese to reach Mars and Jupiter.

Chinese state media reports that 60 Long March-9 SLVs could be built between 2030 and 2035.  About 40 of these could allow China to select the ten best locations to build Moon Bases with long-term habitats and equipment to mine water-ice and other minerals.  This will allow China to begin the business of producing oxygen, rocket fuel, and to start building new space infrastructure such as massive solar power gathering satellites.  With these, China might achieve energy independence, or become an energy exporter to client states supporting the CCP’s hegemonistic ambitions.

To dominate the Moon, Chinese sources indicate the PLA-controlled space program will deploy a constellation of navigation and communication satellites around the Moon.  Chinese sources also say the Moon will be used to observe the Earth, or more precisely, which they do not say, track all of the crucial satellite systems in between that contribute to America’s current margin of military superiority.

China’s moon program will then extend to the Lagrangian Points –the five regions of balanced gravitational forces around the Earth and Moon which allow the more fuel-efficient placement of observation and communication satellites or manned outposts.  These can help monitor and control the “Earth Moon System,” and control who benefits from the Space Economy.

With its Tianwen-1 Mars probe expected to land this June, China will be the first country to simultaneously deploy a Mars orbiting satellite, a Mars lander, and a Mars rover to explore its landing site. In 2008 China may send its first Mars sample return mission, which could occur just after, or simultaneously with, a U.S. mission.  By the mid-to-late 2030s China could be sending manned missions to Mars with the goal of finding choice sites for resource exploitation.

In addition, China has ambitions to explore nearby and distant asteroids which also hold the potential for being vast sources of water and mineral resources, as well as possible locations for large manned settlements.  In the same vein, in 2030 China plans to its first mission to Callisto, one of Jupiter’s more promising moons, with better safety margins and possible resources to help enable human habitation.

These are grand ambitions on the part of the CCP, but as a dictatorship it will face no opposition or funding constraints, and can command needed inputs across the whole of society without interruption. Abroad, the CCP can subsidize participation in its space programs via its $1 trillion Belt & Road Initiative – a global commercial, diplomatic, military and intelligence infrastructure network across 70 countries, some of which have space programs. This helps ensure a large coalition of political support for the CCP’s hegemonic goals, on Earth and in space, including fellow UN Security Council member Russia. China intends to write the rules, not follow them, in Space just as in the South China Sea, Hong Kong, WHO, and financial markets.

For the United States, it is clear that President Barack Obama’s 2010 decision to cancel George W. Bush’s Constellation program to return to the Moon was a strategic disaster that gifted the CCP with a decade to advance its plans for space hegemony. If the U.S. is to catch up, it is imperative that the U.S. return to the moon early, with as many space allies as possible, in order to secure choice positions and ensure China does not achieve monopoly control.

It is also crucial to build the U.S. space private sector into the main engine to develop the Space Economy and to ensure its benefits for America and other democracies. Across the U.S. space enterprise, protection of critical technologies, legacy programs, key resources, and secrets needs to be prioritized and rigorously enforced, given the pervasive espionage efforts and serial successes of the PRC, and other enemies which have cost the U.S. trillions of dollars.

The Trump Administration’s realization of the CCP’s space threat spurred its creation of the Space Force as a separate service, and the signing of the Artemis Accords as the basis of a coalition for a U.S.-led rules-based open-use approach to space. Much remains to be done to rapidly build upon these initiatives so critical to moving beyond exploration, to actual expansion and exploitation of both near and deep space, before the initiative is ceded to the PRC and it’s too late. The magnitude and consistency of the U.S. commitment to space will be vital not only technologically, but also diplomatically as countries face the decision of where to place their ‘space bets’, choosing to bandwagon with the U.S. or with China.

What priority the Biden Administration will assign to the nation’s space enterprise is unclear, given its early dismissive attitude toward the Space Force, and the fact that most of its key national security team worked for Barack Obama — who when cancelling the moon program in 2010 proclaimed, “We are no longer racing against an adversary.”

What is clear is that if China achieves military and commercial hegemony in space, the resulting wealth, power, and status will ensure that its dictatorship survives far longer, and becomes even more threatening to the U.S. military, economy, and alliances — and indeed to freedom, both on earth and in space. “Who lost Space?” is not a debate the nation can afford or deserves to have.