Put this one in the category of good ideas, disingenuous sources. According to Xinhua, the Chinese government's official news agency, Chinese officials will "actively push" for a treaty barring space-based arms this week.
The United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament is being held in Geneva this week. Hence the announcement by Wang Qun, leader of the Chinese delegation, Xinhua reports.
This isn't new territory for China. Both it and Russia have been pushing for international talks on barring space-based arms since the beginning of the decade. Many other nations have been amenable, but the United States has consistently put the kibosh on any such idea.
The current American policy is contained in a late 2006 document called the National Space Policy (PDF file), which essentially rules out U.S.
participation in any kind of space arms treaty.
According to that document, the U.S. will reject "new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space." Other provisions say the U.S. reserves the right to
"dissuade or deter others" from impeding U.S. space goals, or from
"developing capabilities intended to do so," as well as "deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S.
national interests."
Diplomats from other countries find this no-negotiation stance worrisome. So do most arms-control experts, and U.S. researchers from groups such as the Federation of American Scientists.
But of course China's hands aren't exactly clean on this issue. Just a few months after the release of the National Space Policy, China became the first, and so far only, country to tested a missile that successfully destroyed an orbiting satellite. (Thanks to commenter SuperCorgi -- yes indeed, the U.S. and the Soviet Union tested anti-satellite, or ASAT weapons in the past. Some info can be found here and here. Sorry. -j.)
Some U.S. analysts saw this as a message to the Pentagon: Space-based weapons are vulnerable. Time to talk. But it has also helped lead to a space race in East Asia, with other nations' military services discussing the prospect of arms in space.
China's leadership may indeed, as Xinhua quotes Wang as saying,
"oppose weaponization and (an) arms race in ... outer space." But if so, it has certainly sent mixed messages.
China advocates legalizing prevention of outer space arms race [Xinhua]
(Image: A Lego version of Star Wars' Death Star, still the most powerful
(and OK, easily blown up) space-based weapon known to movie-going man.
Credit: Danny Lakeboy, via Flickr.)
