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
During a speech at the Ketagalan Forum’s 2021 Asia-Pacific Security Dialogue on Tuesday last week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) referred to “neighboring countries,” which some interpreted to include China. Taiwan’s pan-blue camp was incandescent with rage and claimed that Tsai’s choice of words would lead to “cross-strait conflict.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was predictably hopping mad. The party’s pro-Beijing credentials were on full display as it demanded the president take into account Beijing’s reaction before opening her mouth. The KMT’s dogged cleaving to the mystical “one China” dogma of the failed “1992 consensus” shows that its members really do view
On Aug. 27, the Executive Yuan announced that it would make cannabis the main target in the government’s fight against drugs and adopt three major strategies to tackle it. The authorities are to be commended for their determination to deal with the problem. Cannabis users are by no means few in number. Many of them have high social status or returned to Taiwan after studying overseas, and most of them started smoking cannabis while at university. Many think that cannabis is no more harmful to health than tobacco, so they think it should be tolerated as it has been in the Netherlands,
In its five years of existence, the New Southbound Policy — the government’s flagship foreign policy framework — has yielded results for Taiwan. One important development has been closer bonds between Indians and Taiwanese. The establishment of greater people-to-people ties is one of the policy’s major pillars. Despite such obvious successes, the New Southbound Policy has yet to reach its potential. While the COVID-19 pandemic might have diminished the policy’s stamina, the pandemic should be used to assess it and inject it with new vigor. Inspiration could be taken from India’s Act East Policy. A notable success of the Act East Policy
Taiwan is now entering a period of maximum danger from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) due to an accelerating Chinese military challenge now emboldened by a shocking dive in American strategic credibility occasioned by its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. This means there is a much higher chance that in the next one to three years CCP leader Xi Jinping (習近平) may order the PLA to invade Taiwan because he believes the PLA can win and that the Americans can be dissuaded from coming to Taiwan’s aid in time. It is still possible for Taiwan and Washington
RSS