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Editorial: China's missile tests the US

It took a while for the news to come out, but on Thursday last week the Chinese military showed its true colors and fired a missile into space, destroying an obsolete Chinese weather satellite.

In what must rank as the funniest comment to come out of China in some time, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) yesterday said: "There's no need to feel threatened about this."

Apart from the political repercussions, the missile test represents grotesque carelessness on the part of the Chinese. The wreckage from the destroyed satellite -- a spray of tiny metallic parts -- has the small but very real potential to damage other satellites and even the International Space Station, and for a long period of time.

The US has been joined by Japan, Australia and other countries in demanding some form of accountability from the Chinese for their extraordinary behavior, but regardless of how Beijing responds, this incident demolishes the suggestion that the Chinese military and its Communist Party bosses can behave in an accountable, let alone responsible, manner in military and space affairs.

In the wake of the North Korean nuclear test, this missile test suggests that Beijing has, if anything, taken on Pyongyang has a role model.

The myth of the peaceful rise of China has many subscribers who romanticize the history of Chinese civilization. What is surprising about the destruction of the satellite, however, is that the Chinese could so summarily reduce to myth the idea that it can act as a force for regional peace and mediation.

In tandem with this, it has become clearer that the Chinese military is growing more confident and playing the Pentagon for a pack of fools. It defies common sense that the Chinese could launch this missile without informing Washington and international scientific organizations beforehand, yet this is just what appears to have happened.

Almost as worrying as the missile test is the fact that the Bush administration sat on the news of this development for a week before bringing it to public attention.

Washington's delay suggests that it has frighteningly little comprehension of the need for an immediate and unequivocal response -- if not retaliation -- over Beijing's misuse of space technology and its ramping up of military tensions in what is already a tense region.

The theory that the Middle East quagmire is compromising the security interests of the US by giving the Chinese diplomatic room to maneuver and allowing it to expand its military capabilities with impunity is gaining more currency. Of greatest concern for Taiwan, therefore, is the possibility that the US government's ability to retaliate against symbolic and technical advances in China's military capabilities has been dulled.

The US State Department, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in particular, must denounce the Chinese launch in the strongest terms and prepare a practical response if they are to be taken seriously in the region.

Tongue-clucking and muted expressions of regret from the State Department will not wash. The Chinese can destroy satellites from ground-based missiles and they want the world to know it. Beijing must be made to understand that responsible nations will not tolerate the direction in which it has chosen to travel.
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