While NASA and the European Space Agency gets most of the world’s

While NASA and the European Space Agency gets most of the world’s attention, China, Japan and India are racing for the heavens.

The general public in the West largely views the exploration of space as dominated by the United States and perhaps Russia. Sometimes, as in the case of the Rosetta mission, they may give thought to Europe’s capabilities. Few people think of India when it comes to missions to Mars, but popular joy erupted across India in September 2014 after its Mangalyaan scientific spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around the red planet. One Indian reader responded to the story on a major online news outlet by posting: “It is [a] moment of pride as India becomes [the] 1st Asian nation to reach Mars.” And understood to all Indian readers was the point that China had—after a series of Asian firsts in space—finally been surpassed.

Since China’s first human spaceflight in 2003 and its threatening anti-satellite test in 2007, Asia has seen a surge in space activity, with budgets increasing rapidly across the region. While few officials admit to the term, a “space race” is emerging in Asia.

The surge of Asian countries joining the ranks of major space powers mirrors the rise of Asian economies and their militaries more generally since the end of the Cold War. But following the political drivers of these trends leads most often to regional rivalries, not a desire to compete with the United States or Russia. Being first in Asia to do anything in space brings prestige, lends credibility to governments in power, and helps stimulate Asia’s young population to study science and technology, which has other benefits for their national economies.

The responses to China’s rise have included the sudden development of military space programs by two countries that previously shunned such activities—Japan and India—and dynamic new activities in countries ranging from Australia to Singapore to Vietnam. On the Korean Peninsula, both North and South have orbited satellites in the past three years and both have pledged to develop much larger rockets. Many of these countries realize that they can’t “win” Asia’s space race, but they also know that they cannot afford to lose.

China’s rapid expansion in space activity has also raised serious concerns within U.S. military circles and in NASA. But these developments pose an existential threat to China’s neighbors, some of whom see Beijing’s space program as yet another threatening dimension to their deep-seated historical, economic, and geo-political rivalries for status and influence within the Asian pecking order. Even more, space achievements affect the self-perceptions of their national populations, challenging their governments to do more.

How this competition will play out and whether it can be managed, or channeled into more positive directions, will have a major impact on the future of international relations in space. The U.S. government has thus far responded with a two-track strategy, seeking a bilateral space security dialogue with Beijing, while quietly expanding space partnerships with U.S. friends and allies in the region, adding a space dimension to the U.S. “pivot” to Asia.

China

Although shocking to some, China’s space efforts have actually been long in coming. Beijing has gradually built up a range of scientific, commercial, and military space capabilities since the 1980s that have now put it in a position to compete favorably with any country in Asia—even technologically advanced Japan—while presenting an asymmetric threat to the United States. Over the past decade China has launched a spacecraft that mapped the Moon (Chang’e 1), conducted a lunar rover mission (Chang’e 2), and orbited and visited a small space station (Tiangong 1), with plans for a much larger station within a decade. It is building a new launch site on Hainan Island with plans for a heavy-left booster.

In the military realm, the People’s Liberation Army has demonstrated the capability of putting critical U.S. space assets at risk in a crisis, forcing Washington to think twice about the surety of its space-enhanced military capabilities. The sheer size of China’s young scientific and engineering cadre, its steadily expanding satellite network (including a newly operational commercial and military GPS system called Beidou), its increasing space budget, and its investment in military counter-space technologies—with recent tests of possible offensive systems in 2010, 2013, and 2014—presage a broad and formidable set of capabilities. Experts are divided over whether China has set itself on a course for space dominance or not. Its policies are likely to be influenced—for better or for worse—by its economic status and its evolving relationship with the United States. But Asian countries are not taking the threat lying down.

Unlike in Europe, where all of the major powers (except Russia) are members of the European Space Agency and share a cooperative approach to space (including highly integrated cost sharing), Asia’s space arrangements are highly nationalistic, sometimes secretive, and mostly competitive. There are no space security talks currently ongoing among the major powers, no history of arms control talks linking space and nuclear deterrence (unlike in the U.S.-Soviet case), and no civil space cooperation in its key political dyads: China-Japan, India-China, and North-South Korea.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/17/why-china-will-win-the-next-space-race.html