AP, TOKYO
China's anti-satellite weapons test raised concerns in Asia and the US yesterday about the rising militarization of space and prompted governments to demand explanations from Beijing.
The US said China conducted the test earlier this month in which an old Chinese weather satellite was destroyed by a missile.
Analysts said China's weather satellites would travel at about the same altitude as US spy satellites, so the test represented an indirect threat to US defense systems.
Officials in Japan and Australia immediately demanded China explain its actions.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who was in New York, said Sydney opposed the test and had called upon Beijing's ambassador to Australia, Madame Fu Ying, for an explanation.
"Our concern about this is that to have a capacity to shoot down satellites in outer space is not consistent with ... the traditional Chinese position of opposition to the militarization of outer space," he told reporters.
"So we've asked the Chinese for an explanation as to what this may mean," Downer said, adding that so far Chinese officials, including the ambassador in Canberra, said they are not aware of the incident.
The US Department of Defense would not comment on the test, but other US officials said it raised serious concerns in Washington.
"The US believes China's development and testing of such weapons is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that both countries aspire to in the civil space area," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Thursday. "We and other countries have expressed our concern to the Chinese."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tokyo has asked Beijing for an explanation and stressed the importance of the peaceful use of space.
"We must use space peacefully," he said. "We are asking the Chinese government about the test."
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso criticized Beijing for failing to give advance notice to Tokyo.
"We told China that we doubt if we could call this a peaceful use," Aso said at a press conference.
Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Japan's top government spokesman, suggested that China's lack of transparency over its military development could trigger suspicions about its motives in the region.
Meanwhile, China said yesterday that other nations had no reason to feel threatened by its space program amid reports that it had shot down a satellite for the first time.
"There's no need to feel threatened about this," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told journalists, but he declined to confirm that China had downed one of its own satellites.
"So far we have not got any confirmed information about this."
He added that China had no intention of triggering an arms race in space.
also see story:
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS