The PLA yesterday underlined its keenness to meet a future space race head-on with an article in the military mouthpiece listing 'three necessaries' in space development.
A military analyst said the article was an attempt to persuade various groups within the army to rally around the programme and support the huge cost of space research and development.
The opinion piece yesterday in the PLA Daily said the advance of space development could manifest national power, stake a claim on space resources and be the decisive factor in a modern-day battle.
The article, written by Shi Zhiyong , stressed that the PLA would face more challenges and competition in the form of space races in the future because of the United States' 'attempts to control space through plans to return to the moon and land on Mars'.
'Space technology is the great comprehensive modern science that represents a state's standard of technological research,' Mr Shi wrote, in reference to the first of the three necessaries.
On the second necessary, he said space had limitless resources, such as the 'boundless vacuum that could provide an ideal environment for different kinds of scientific experiments'.
