China urges US to join talks on preventing arms race in outer space
- Disarmament envoy Li Song tells UN conference that Washington’s ‘double standards’ are blocking efforts to keep weapons earthbound
- Beijing and Moscow have already proposed a treaty to ban the use of arms in space, but Washington has so far refused to join talks on the issue
“After the end of the Cold War, and especially in the past two decades, the US has tried its best to get rid of its international obligations, refused to be bound by new treaties and long resisted multilateral negotiations on PAROS [the 1967 UN resolution on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space],” Li said.
“To put it bluntly, the US wants to dominate outer space.”
05:06
How China’s space programme went from launching satellites to building its own space station
According to the proposed treaty, signatories should promise not to place weapons or threaten or use force in outer space, avoiding any activities that are “inconsistent’ with the purpose of the treaty.
But the US and its allies have rejected the proposal, citing a number of concerns, including the lack of restrictions on the development of ground-based weapons that could be used in space and failure to include verification mechanisms.
China expected to name woman for next space station crew
During his speech to the 2021 Outer Space Security Conference, Li defended the treaty and accused the US of “double standards”, according to a transcript published by the Chinese mission in Geneva.
He cited the example of the Biological Weapons Convention, which he said “has no verification mechanism but has been effective for over 40 years and has been one of the most important multilateral treaties in the field of weapons of mass destruction”.
“The US has been blocking the negotiation of a verification protocol for the [Biological Weapons Convention] exclusively for 20 years and has not relented so far,” Li said. “This double standard is the ‘fundamental flaw’ that hinders the prevention of an arms race in outer space.”
01:21
Chinese astronauts return to Earth in re-entry capsule from Tiangong space station
Li said China and Russia were not opposed to verification mechanisms, but wanted to first “close the door on the weaponisation of space … from a political and legal standpoint, and then address the issue of verification through an additional protocol when the technical conditions are right”.
The European Union has previously proposed that a code of conduct should be established, while Britain is pushing for the establishment of international military norms in space, a proposal that the US is likely to support, according to the website Breakingdefense.com.
But Li said the British proposal, which reportedly stops short of arms control mechanisms, did not go far enough.
Tiangong astronauts return with vision of ‘new heights’ in space travel
“If space is not effectively prevented from becoming a battlefield, then the ‘rules of space traffic’ will be no more than a ‘code of space warfare’,” he said.
As a relative newcomer to the space race, China has been steadily developing its capabilities to become a leader in both commercial and military space technology.
It made international headlines in 2007 with the launch of a kinetic kill vehicle that destroyed an ageing weather satellite orbiting 865km (537 miles) above Earth.
More recently, it established the BeiDou navigation network, which has both military and civilian applications and is seen as an alternative to the Pentagon-developed GPS.
01:07
Chinese astronauts aboard Tianhe space module conduct clean-up in zero gravity
Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited a satellite monitoring and control centre in Xian, where he urged military officers to “manage, utilise and protect” space, which he said was “an important strategic asset for the country”.
Meanwhile, China has stepped up its partnership with Russia in developing space technology, including work on a new international lunar station as well as deep-space exploration, satellite communication technology, aerospace components and Russia’s proposed Spektr-M scientific satellite.
While Beijing insists its space programme is for peaceful purposes, its rapidly improving capabilities have raised suspicions, particularly from the US.
China to harvest sun’s energy in space and beam it to Earth for power by 2030
In 2019, former president Donald Trump set up the Space Force, a new branch of the US military, which was seen as a response to the security challenge from China and Russia.
Last year, in its space strategy, the Pentagon listed China and Russia as strategic threats that “have weaponised space as a means to reduce US and allies’ military effectiveness and challenge … freedom of operation in space”.
