Sino-American rivalry in orbit: what are the facts?

Since launch­ing its first satel­lite in 1970, China has trav­elled a spec­tac­u­lar path in the con­quest of space. Now the world’s third space power, it rivals the United States and Rus­sia on all fronts: crewed flights, plan­et­ary explor­a­tion, and applic­a­tion satel­lites. Yet, des­pite budgets still three times smal­ler than Wash­ing­ton’s, Beijing dis­plays clear ambi­tions and a polit­ic­al con­sist­ency that con­trasts with Amer­ic­an reversals. Between myths of lun­ar pred­a­tion and tech­no­lo­gic­al real­it­ies, what is the true nature of this Sino-Amer­ic­an rivalry in orbit? Isa­belle Sour­bès-Ver­ger, research dir­ect­or at CNRS, sorts fact from fiction.

TRUE

Without a doubt, China is now one of the world’s lead­ing space powers. It has repeatedly demon­strated its abil­ity to carry out all types of mis­sions, hav­ing inves­ted in sev­er­al major areas of space explor­a­tion in recent decades.

After gain­ing inde­pend­ent access to space in 1970 to send its own satel­lites into orbit, in 2003 the coun­try was able to send people into space and then have its own sta­tions in orbit, cap­ab­il­it­ies that pre­vi­ously only Rus­sia and the United States pos­sessed. China has also mastered explor­a­tion mis­sions, which involve leav­ing Earth’s orbit to travel to Mars, for example. To date, China and the United States remain the only nations to have attemp­ted and suc­ceeded in land­ing a rover on Mars and get­ting it to move around. Its tech­no­lo­gic­al expert­ise is evid­ent in the field of satel­lite sys­tems for tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, obser­va­tion and nav­ig­a­tion. Astro­nomy and astro­phys­ics are two oth­er fields of study in which it has invested.

In short, it meets all the cri­ter­ia for achiev­ing space power status.

UNCERTAIN

While the United States has undoubtedly held the top spot in the rank­ings for sev­er­al dec­ades, second and third place are more dif­fi­cult to determ­ine. Rus­sia stands out due to its cap­ab­il­it­ies in mil­it­ary space tech­no­logy, while the European Uni­on has ambi­tious high-tech pro­grammes, even if it lacks autonomy in manned flights. If the cri­terion used to define the rank­ing is the diversity of cap­ab­il­it­ies, rather than their level, then China ranks ahead of its two com­pet­it­ors, Rus­sia and the European Uni­on. Nev­er­the­less, sev­er­al years of effort and invest­ment will still be needed before it can com­pete on equal terms with the United States.

A com­par­is­on of the budgets alloc­ated to space is enough to grasp the gap between the two powers. Wash­ing­ton spends between $60–70bn on space, includ­ing $40–50bn on mil­it­ary space, while China’s total budget is $20bn. Beijing has achieved its primary object­ive of being recog­nised glob­ally as a lead­ing space power by catch­ing up from a con­sid­er­able ini­tial tech­no­lo­gic­al lag. How­ever, it is not clear that it is in the space sec­tor that China wants to demon­strate its superi­or­ity over its com­pet­it­or; oth­er sym­bol­ic areas are also up for grabs.

TRUE

In the his­tory of the US space pro­gramme, major tra­di­tion­al indus­tri­al­ists such as Boe­ing were indeed private act­ors who played a key role in nation­al strategy. This con­fig­ur­a­tion has changed pro­foundly, as new play­ers, primar­ily the Elon Musk led SpaceX and its sub­si­di­ary Starlink, have changed the rules of the game. They stand out for their desire to pur­sue their own space policy, where­as the first gen­er­a­tion of play­ers were con­tent to ful­fil a ser­vice pro­vider role by respond­ing to orders from NASA. Today, NewS­pace entre­pren­eurs can own their own launch vehicles. This is the case with Starlink, which uses Fal­con launch vehicles fre­quently used by NASA and the Depart­ment of Defence. These pub­lic orders off­set and recoup their fin­an­cial costs.

The Chinese land­scape is dif­fer­ent in many respects. A few private com­pan­ies are act­ive in the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions and obser­va­tion sec­tors, and recently, launch vehicle man­u­fac­tur­ers have emerged. How­ever, as state con­trol is inher­ent to the Chinese mod­el, the space eco­nomy and entre­pren­eur­ship out­side the pub­lic sphere remain sub­ject to polit­ic­al decisions.

UNCERTAIN

Half of the oper­a­tion­al satel­lites in low Earth orbit belong to Starlink, a com­pany in which Elon Musk is the major­ity share­hold­er. In space, he is help­ing to con­sol­id­ate the United States’ dom­in­ant pos­i­tion, but above all he is fol­low­ing his own path, which is not always the same as that of the White House.

FALSE

When dis­cuss­ing lun­ar explor­a­tion, it is essen­tial to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between issues relat­ing to manned flights and those relat­ing to unmanned flights. With a view to exploit­ing lun­ar resources, human pres­ence is a factor that cre­ates addi­tion­al con­straints due to the need for water, air, food, etc. This requires addi­tion­al infra­struc­ture and there­fore high addi­tion­al costs, where­as robot­ics has made major advances.

Resource exploit­a­tion has two com­pon­ents: on-site use, known as ISRU (In Situ Resource Util­isa­tion), and exploit­a­tion for com­mer­cial pur­poses. ISRU is essen­tial for the oper­a­tion of facil­it­ies, and as such, neither the Sino-Rus­si­an base nor the Amer­ic­an base can do without it. Com­mer­cial exploit­a­tion, on the oth­er hand, is a purely Amer­ic­an ini­ti­at­ive designed to attract the private sec­tor but which, for the moment, is mainly sup­por­ted by NASA.

The dis­course in the United States is to pos­i­tion China as a pred­at­ory com­pet­it­or. This nar­rat­ive, which is inspired by com­pet­i­tion on Earth but also refers to the race to the Moon with the USSR, serves to mobil­ise sup­port. But bey­ond the myths to be per­petu­ated and the tech­no­lo­gic­al chal­lenges, polit­ic­al and even eth­ic­al ques­tions arise when we talk about lun­ar resources and their poten­tial use on Earth. What would be the point of bring­ing back a neces­sar­ily lim­ited quant­ity of rare metals in an era when their con­sump­tion is meas­ured in tonnes? Fur­ther­more, if we add the cost of return to the cost of exploit­a­tion, the eco­nom­ic bal­ance and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of such a mod­el seem inconsistent.

UNCERTAIN

Across the Atlantic, the greatest uncer­tainty is primar­ily polit­ic­al. Pres­id­ent Trump’s plans for space explor­a­tion are incon­sist­ent. NASA’s Artemis space pro­gramme is proof of this. With the goal of land­ing a crew on the Moon by 2027, it was launched dur­ing his first term, con­tin­ued under Joe Biden, and is now being called into ques­tion dur­ing his second term.

In con­trast, China seems to be pur­su­ing a clear goal: to take a Chinese cit­izen to the Moon for the first time in the country’s his­tory, learn how to sus­tain human life there, and then set up a sci­entif­ic explor­a­tion base. Let us remem­ber that in 1969, while Neil Arm­strong was walk­ing on the Moon, China was under­go­ing the Cul­tur­al Revolu­tion. On the oth­er hand, in terms of dead­lines, it is unlikely that the crews will speed up the pace in response to Don­ald Trump’s with­draw­al. The repu­ta­tion­al stakes are high, and they will not run the risk of failure.

Alicia Piveteau