Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at a ceremony on July 30 officially commissioned China’s BeiDou-3 satellite navigation system. The constellation of satellites, which is now fully operational, was completed six months ahead of schedule.
Its deployment means that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now in possession of an autonomous, global satellite navigation system to rival the US’ GPS, Russia’s Glonass and the EU’s Galileo.
Although Chinese officials have repeatedly sought to reassure the world that BeiDou-3 is primarily a civilian and commercial platform, US and European military experts beg to differ.
Teresa Hitchens, a senior research associate at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies, has conducted an in-depth study into the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force.
According to Hitchens, one of the three small satellites launched into orbit by the PLA in 2013 was equipped with a robotic grappling arm capable of interfering with or even destroying other satellites.
From an early stage, Beijing sought to exploit space technology for its military value.
In 2014, the PLA’s in-house newspaper People’s Liberation Army Daily and Huabei People’s Militia, a monthly periodical published by the PLA’s then-Beijing Military Region Political Department, featured an identically worded paragraph, which proves China’s intention to militarize space:
“Whoever controls space occupies Earth’s commanding heights. Whoever occupies this commanding position will be able to gain the initiative during war.”
Additionally, the Pentagon’s 2015 annual report to the US Congress on China’s military power revealed that all civilian satellites which China has launched into orbit use technology that can support its military’s operations west of the first island chain to perform a range of military tasks including day and nighttime reconnaissance and the transmission of intelligence.
As the PLA is aware that mastering space would be key to winning wars, any communications, intelligence and navigation system based in space would be an important factor in the PLA’s joint war-fighting capability and its ability to achieve victory on the modern battlefield.
According to the Study Times, the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School, the more than decade-long operations of the older BeiDou-1 system allowed the PLA to make significant advances in a number of areas, including conducting exercises, logistics, patrolling China’s borders, directing its forces into theaters of conflict and providing emergency disaster relief.
For example, during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, BeiDou-1 enabled the PLA to rapidly position troops for disaster relief.
With its increased scale and scope, BeiDou-3 would not be limited to providing civilian-based services, such as basic navigation, short message communication, and international search and rescue, as Beijing claims.
It would give the PLA the ability to carry out long-range weapons targeting and provide round-the-clock, all-weather global positioning and precision weapons guidance, and even allow the PLA to destroy the satellite technology of other nations.
Taiwan’s national defense and national security apparatus must research how the nation can deal with and prevent the PLA’s possible use of BeiDou-3’s military functions in its Taiwan Strait combat planning, which could include using it to completely destroy the Taiwanese military’s precision guidance and combat communications capabilities.
Yao Chung-yuan is an adjunct professor and former deputy director of the Ministry of National Defense’s strategic planning department.
Translated by Edward Jones
A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China. However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array
Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
Saturday is the day of the first batch of recall votes primarily targeting lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The scale of the recall drive far outstrips the expectations from when the idea was mooted in January by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). The mass recall effort is reminiscent of the Sunflower movement protests against the then-KMT government’s non-transparent attempts to push through a controversial cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014. That movement, initiated by students, civic groups and non-governmental organizations, included student-led protesters occupying the main legislative chamber for three weeks. The two movements are linked
RSS