A. Space being used to support ruling party legitimacy

Link- Missile Defense

Many Chinese officials assume that China is the real target for U.S. missile defense and space planning. From Beijing’s perspective, it is inconceivable that Washington would expend such massive resources on a system that would be purely defensive and aimed only at “rogue” states. As seen by Chinese leaders, China’s own small strategic nuclear arsenal appears to be a much more plausible target for U.S. missile defenses. Chinese experts are concerned that even a limited missile defense system could neutralize China’s fewer than two dozen single-warhead ICBMs that are capable of reaching the United States. “It is evident that the U.S. [national missile defense] will seriously undermine the effectiveness of China’s limited nuclear capability from the first day of its deployment,” said Ambassador Sha Zukang, the former director-general of the Department of Arms Control and Disarmament at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “This cannot but cause grave concerns to China,” he said.[12] Some Chinese fear that, whether or not the U.S. missile defenses are as effective as planned, U.S. decision-makers could act rashly and risk a disarming first strike once the system is operational.

From the Chinese perspective, a non-space-based BMD system would be less threatening to national security than a space-based one. Countermeasures for mid-course missile defense systems would be less expensive and easier for China to develop. These include decoys, anti-simulation measures33 and an increase in warheads capable of penetrating such a defense system. However, as many scientists point out, a robust, global-coverage BMD system would have to include boost-phasemissiledefense.34 FromtheChineseperspective,aU.S.space-based, boost-phase missile defense system would pose the greatest threat of all. This is due to the fact that at boost phase, the missile defense system would have fewer targets; the target ICBM would be much larger than the normal re-entry vehicle; the target would be much more fragile than a re-entry vehicle; and the target would be easily detectable due to the bright plumes of the burning booster. A non-space-based, boost-phase missile defense system would not be able to cover China’s ICBMs. In fact, an ICBM at an altitude of 200km can be detected within a range of 1,600km by a sensor on the ground, and within 2,000km by a sensor at an altitude of 15km. Because of China’s vast area, the United States would have to destroy a Chinese missile in boost-phase from space.35 As such, even a limited ban on space weapons would significantly reduce the threat for China from U.S. missile defense systems, assuming that Chinese military planners have confidence in countermeasures for midcourse missile defense systems.

On this account, China's primary concern with US space weaponization is its contribution to a US multilayered missile defense shield. Indeed, China's campaign for PAROS negotiation at the CD seems to intensify after each new development in United States BMD plans. Although China could respond to a BMD shield with effective countermeasures, future technological developments may permit the BMD system to vitiate China's nuclear deterrent. In the case of a conflict over Taiwan, for example, a US space-based BMD system could prove very valuable to the United States. According to this view, if the United States decides to advance with such a BMD program, China will respond so as to maintain its nuclear deterrence. It will modernize its ICBM fleet (a program it has already initiated), develop further countermeasures to circumvent the BMD shield, and develop the means to launch multiple ASAT attacks. Ultimately, an arms race could ensue. This, however, would not be China's chosen outcome. Its development of space weapons is merely a counterstrategy to what it views as likely US space weaponization. China would much prefer that the United States negotiate a PAROS agreement not to build the BMD shield. If this were the case, China's January ASAT test would appear to be an attempt to get the United States to the negotiating table. By launching the ASAT, China sought to put the United States on notice that any attempt to weaponize outer space would lead to this mutually undesirable path.

While the China space threat consists of a spectrum of possibilities, the U.S. space threat to China clearly goes beyond the realm of possibilities, Zhang Hui at Harvard University contends in his article that examines threats from a Chinese perspective. Drawing on authoritative sources, he argues that the United States is unambiguously committed not only to exploiting space for military purposes, but also to controlling space by all necessary means including weapons deployed in space. The objective is not only to protect U.S. space assets, but to deny adversaries the use of space in wartime. In its most ambitious rendition, controlling space applies even to the transitory period of several minutes when an adversary’s missiles are passing through space enroute to their wartime targets on enemy soil. This prospective role for U.S. space control weapons – shooting down an adversary’s ballistic missiles – is the central concern of Zhang’s analysis, as it represents the most serious threat to China’s security.A space-based U.S. missile defense system, especially one designed to shoot down ballistic missiles during their several minutes of boosted flight after launch (boost-phase defenses), would pose the gravest potential threat by enabling the United States to neutralize China’s strategic nuclear missile deterrent.

In some respects Zhang and many U.S. analysts understate the degree of potential threat to China by stressing the huge cost of the thousands of space- based interceptors needed to maintain an around-the-clock vigil of Chinese missile launches, and by stressing the relative ease by which China’s missiles could punch holes in this defensive constellation. The understatement derives from the fact that a far less extensive galaxy of U.S. space-based interceptors would be needed if the United States could choose the moment for initiating hostilities as part of a preemptive offensive strategy. Even a constellation of dozens of interceptors could be decisive if the United States enjoyed the luxury of setting the terms of the onset of conflict and the interceptors were optimally positioned at that moment.

In Zhang’s view, China could counter by deploying anti-space weapons designed to cripple the U.S. missile defense network, but such a step could ignite an arms race in space (and, we might add, create impulses to preemptively strike in space during a crisis). Alternatively, China could ramp up its arsenal of nuclear missiles and warheads to the point at which it would overwhelm the U.S. defense capability, but the downsides are numerous. A Chinese missile build-up could trigger nuclear reactions from India. If Pakistan follows suit, an arms race in South Asia could result. It could also require China to re-start its fissile materials production facilities and thereby unravel China’s commitment to the multinational treaty calling for all countries to stop future production of such materials.