China Watches and Waits

May 3, 2010 | 2:22 pm
Gregory Kulacki
China Project Manager

China’s reaction to the U.S. launch of the X-37B space plane has been more reserved than many American observers expected. This did not stop the usual set of Chinese military “experts” from pushing exaggerated and uninformed claims about U.S. intentions to an eager Chinese press. My personal favorite was a statement from PLAAF Colonel Dai Xu (in Chinese), described as a “well-known scholar of military strategy,” who informed his readers that the launch of the space plane was consistent with the intent of the movie Avatar, which “exposed America’s strategic thinking, which is to make the joint control of air and space with robots, attacking the surface, the most basic means of war fighting”.

A more thoughtful Chinese commentary (in Chinese), more consistent with China’s quarter-century quest for negotiations on space at the Conference on Disarmament, came from Prof. Zhao Kejin of Qinghua University’s Institute for International Studies. Zhao argued that China need not chase after the United States and develop their own space plane. He urged China to continue to pursue formal talks with the United States to prevent an arms race in space, beginning with the negotiation of a treaty prohibiting anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.

About the author

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Gregory Kulacki is a Senior Analyst and the China Project Manager for the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Research Center for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (RECNA) at Nagasaki University. He works on improving cross-cultural communication between the United States of America, China and Japan on nuclear weapons and related security issues. Prior to joining UCS in 2002, Dr. Kulacki was the Director of External Studies at Pitzer College, an Associate Professor of Government at Green Mountain College and the China Director for the Council on International Educational Exchange. Gregory completed his doctorate in government and politics at the University of Maryland College Park.