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According to China expert Joan Johnson-Freese (below) and Peking University's Yu Tiejun (above), a visiting associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, much of the technology used in space is dual-purpose, meaning it can easily be used for either war or peace. (Staff photos Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office)

Johnson-Freese is the chair of the Naval War College's National Security Decision Making Department.

"Most analysts agree about what China is doing in space. There's vast differences over why they're doing it," said Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the Naval War College's National Security Decision Making Department and a top expert on China's space program.

The problem in determining China's intent, according to Johnson-Freese and Peking University's Yu Tiejun, a visiting associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, is that much of the technology used in space is dual-purpose, meaning it can easily be used for either war or peace.

Information from a satellite, for example, can be used to analyze the impact of drought on agriculture or be used to target missiles. Similarly, any satellite that is maneuverable, regardless of its day-to-day purpose, is a potential anti-satellite weapon because it can be crashed into another satellite.

One thing clear from the recent missions is that China is in space to stay.

"Clearly, this has established China as a long-term player in space," Johnson-Freese said. "Their prior launch was not a one-time stunt."

Ultimately, what China does in space may depend on the United States. While most nations in the world have voted to keep space peaceful, the United States has remained silent on the issue, raising suspicions about the country's true intentions concerning space-based weapons.

"That makes it look like the U.S. is pursuing our military goals in space and is diametrically opposed to the rest of the world," Johnson-Freese said.

Johnson-Freese and Yu spoke Friday (Oct. 28) during a Fairbank Center China Current Events Workshop, "China's New Leap into Space, Act II," held at the Center for Government and International Studies.

China's most recent space mission ran from Oct. 12 to 17 and put two Chinese astronauts into Earth orbit. They returned safely when their capsule parachuted onto China's northern grasslands.

The mission follows on the nation's first manned launch in 2003, when a single astronaut circled the Earth for 21.5 hours before returning safely. The Chinese government has announced plans to conduct a spacewalk by 2007.

From a technical standpoint, the second mission's goals were clear, Johnson-Freese said. Its purpose was to extend the technology used in the first mission to longer periods with multiple astronauts.

This month's mission brings to a close the first phase of a three-part program, Johnson-Freese said. The second phase will involve spacewalks and testing docking technology. This is leading to the third phase: the launch of a small space station, possibly as early as 2009, followed within a few years by the launch of a larger space station.

Though possible military goals stemming from the manned program are unclear, several other benefits are clear, Yu said. Such an event feeds national pride, generating internal support for the Chinese government. It also gains international credibility for Chinese technology.

The Chinese government seems to have learned from the Apollo program, Johnson-Freese said, and be banking on the effort generating a burst of economic development from spin-off technologies. The program itself, she said, is an employment program as well as a space program, providing work and training for thousands in the Chinese technology sector.

Whatever the U.S. response, it needs to be based on solid information, Johnson-Freese said. She warned that U.S. information gathering in recent years has been flawed. Information from questionable sources has been presented as credible, and documents have been mistranslated, making the Chinese space program appear more threatening than it otherwise might.

"Surely, someone at the Pentagon has to speak Mandarin," Johnson-Freese said. "Iraq has shown us that cherry-picking information doesn't do us any good.... We need to be scrupulous in our source checking and we're not."

alvin_powell@harvard.edu

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