Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

Eleanor M. Albert: Today, our guest is Robert Lincoln Hines. He is an assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior, he was an assistant professor for the West Space Seminar at the U.S. Air War College. His research focuses on Chinese foreign policy and security, the politics of outer space, and issues of prestige and nationalism in world politics. Lincoln, welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure to have you today!

R. Lincoln Hines: Hi. Nice to be with you here today, Eleanor.

Eleanor M. Albert: I often start most of my conversations trying to get a little bit personal before we dig into the meat of the conversation. To kick us off, I wanted to ask how you came to study China, and then how its space policy became your focus?

R. Lincoln Hines: Great. It's a long and convoluted story, so I'll try to keep it as brief as I can. But when I was in college, I was really interested in the concept of power transitions and thinking about what happens when you have a rising power and a status quo or declining power, negotiating over international order. It drew me to China.

But interestingly, the more I started studying China, the more I was drawn to the domestic politics of China. I saw a much messier, more complicated picture than perhaps I had with my original conceptualization of this power transition. I became really interested in domestic politics and nationalism and went on to do a master's [degree] at American University. There, I ended up doing a Boren Fellowship and I was looking at territorial disputes and thinking about the role of nationalism and how that mattered.

And when I came to my grad program, I knew I was going to work on nationalism and thinking about how that would affect Chinese foreign policy. But the interesting thing, though, is that while this was happening, I was also noticing these other patterns happening in world politics. I remember seeing this big, dramatic fallout with the United States and its allies and partners over the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB); this very dramatic language that very much conjured up this idea of a status dispute.

So, I started thinking more about status. To me it wasn't something that could be explained without looking at the domestic politics of the state. And the more I started looking around at different cases, I increasingly was drawn to China's space program. Then, I became really excited because I also noticed that there hadn't been a lot of work done on this in the first place.

It's just been a fascinating story. And I ended up working on this, writing my dissertation on it. I went to China and carried out interviews. I spent time at Chinese airspace shows. I ended up working for a period of time with Space Force officers for the West Space Seminar at the Air War College at the time. So, it's taken me down this long path and really broadening my understanding of space security.

It's been really interesting seeing how China has juggled its different interests, whether that's nationalism, prestige, or security. We often want to have this easy answer that it's everything, but you can't have everything in a world of finite resources. So, how does China make those decisions, and what are the politics of that? I've seen different periods of time these patterns where China has actually sacrificed its material interest for the optics of status.

Eleanor M. Albert: That is quite a journey. I have some similar interests in terms of my research focus and looking at how status is something that motivates China's behavior, but more in the global governance space.

We're going to talk about China and its space program and what its ambitions are. Before we look back, I'm really curious if you could just give us a status report on what some of China's latest space developments are, whether that's in lunar exploration, whether that's satellite development. What is China doing in the space field, and what are some of the highlights?

R. Lincoln Hines: We'll notice that there's a lot of this rhetoric or discourse of some saying that it's like a new space race with China. I always caution against that framing because if we view it as a race, it's something that China's been in since the late 1950s. And so, while China made notable strides in the 2000s, China's space program actually dates back at least to the launch of Sputnik when Mao Zedong announced that, "We shall make satellites, too."

Since then, China has really had a very comprehensive approach to trying to develop its space program. And in fact, in 2019, China described its goals as trying to become a space power in all respects, demonstrating the comprehensive nature of this modernization. What has probably attracted the most attention has been what China has done in what we conventionally perceive as civil space—there's some questions about how truly independent China's civil space sector is. But what has notably attracted the most attention has been the idea that China, in 2019, it became the first country ever to go to the far side of the Moon. Since, it's been retrieving different lunar samples from the Moon. It established a relay satellite at a Lagrange point, which is very technically challenging and sophisticated. China has also become the second country to soft land on Mars.

China, in addition to all of this, has developed its own space station in 2022. There's a lively debate about the United States transitioning away from supporting the International Space Station, and there is a prospect of possibly only having a Chinese space station in orbit. [The discussions are about transferring [the ISS] into private sector hands.]

And so, there are these really notable strides that China has made. China has also been discussing plans to put taikonauts, or China's equivalent of astronauts, on the Moon by the mid-2030s. This is happening at the same time that we see that the United States has plans to return astronauts to the Moon.

Now, for all of the attention that this gets, the quieter competition is actually where I think the really concerning aspects of U.S.-China space competition are occurring. What has been really interesting has been China's very comprehensive development of different types of counterspace capabilities. This is long premised on this asymmetric strategy where China has tried to exploit the vulnerabilities of the United States being so heavily dependent on space. At the same time, China is actually becoming more dependent on space. This strategy, how viable it is going into the future is another question.

Another pattern that's also interesting to think about is the rise of proliferated constellations, such as the Starlink satellite constellation, and what this means for China's ability to use counterspace weapons. In addition, we always talk about China from a counter-space perspective, but there's also the fact that China is a user of space in its own right, and it uses this for targeting and long-range strikes and being able to communicate with its vessels far from its borders. It's important to think this contributes to China's broader anti-access, area denial strategy. But it's not simply that China is countering the uses of space; it is using space capabilities.

China has also developed a constellation of position, navigation, and timing satellites, which are the equivalent of what the United States has for GPS. China has developed the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. What's been interesting, though, is that China is using this in part as its broader economic or diplomatic strategy.

It offers access to its BeiDou Navigation System as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. It also offers data that it has from its satellites. China also offers launch services to different countries, and often these are developing countries that are part of China's broader Belt and Road Initiative.

Another diplomatic initiative that is worth thinking about is China's International Lunar Research Station. This is China's plans for a lunar base, which it has a memorandum of understanding with the Russian government for developing a lunar base. But China has been trying to attract partners to join this broader mission.

These are some of a few high-level areas to focus on. One last thing I'll add is that what has also received attention is the rise of commercial space sector. In 2014, China announced that it would allow the investment of private capital into its traditionally state-dominated space sector. So, you have this rise of a commercial space sector, which has been challenged in many ways and its ability to compete, but it is another trend that we can see in China's approach to its space activities.

Eleanor M. Albert: I'm curious, just quickly, if you can provide some examples of countries who have sought out or who use this BeiDou Navigation System, and has it been something that has been a success for them?

R. Lincoln Hines: It's a lot of different countries that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative. I know that… I'm currently working on a project with another scholar at my university looking at China's involvement in the Middle East. For example, China, in Egypt, has established a—I want to say it's a satellite assembly and integration testing center, but it's a place where China is actually working with the Egyptian government on developing satellites that are then being launched from China. So, this center is seen, in the article advertising it from China as being something that it's doing with a Belt and Road Initiative partner country.

There's several different countries along the Belt and Road Initiative. I haven't seen any tension from using these services. The drawbacks or limits of the Belt and Road Initiative more broadly are, I think, well-documented, but where actual use of BeiDou navigation satellites or the information from these, where that plays into this, I am not entirely sure.

Eleanor M. Albert: Sure. It's also likely a small part of the broader BRI initiative rollout, at least in terms of the peak heyday of all of the contracts that were being signed.

So, you gave us these great highlights of China's space program. I wanted to compare that to the programs of the United States and see where their ambitions and pursuits either complement one another, or maybe overlap with one another, or compete with one another?

R. Lincoln Hines: There's a few different ways to approach that question. The United States often highlights from a military perspective the threat that China poses in the military space realm, often highlighting, for example, China's 2007 anti-satellite test, which is notably the most debris-generating event in history caused by humans in the space domain. The United States will point that out. It'll also point out China's bizarre maneuvers from some of its satellites that can be within near proximity to U.S. satellites, that demonstrate potential counter-space capabilities or the use of a robotic arm.

Now, I will say that the United States does not say that it has counterspace capabilities publicly, but it certainly has capabilities that seem similar to counterspace capabilities. The United States, for example, had Operation Burnt Frost, which wasn't a counterspace capability, but could be a counterspace capability. It could easily be repurposed. The United States is very quiet, and it's unclear what it has going on in military space. A lot of this is heavily, tightly controlled information.

But I do think that there are times where the United States will emphasize what China does, while at the same time it's not clear ... The United States, for example, has the X-37B that's been flying and demonstrates we have something that could be like a hypersonic type vehicle. No one really knows what it's doing. It could simply just be scientific exploration and pursuits. But it's something that if you're on the Chinese side, you have to wonder what capabilities that could entail.

In some ways, it's important for U.S. policymakers to think about how we might be being interpreted on the other side China, certainly, it's an autocratic regime with interests that are in many ways at odds with the United States, but it is not operating in a vacuum. It is also being affected by decisions being made in the United States. So, that's a little bit different from your question. That's the military realm.

When it comes to lunar competition, it is an area where we see it is very much framed in this competitive lens. I don't see much prospects in the near future for there to be cooperation, even though it would certainly cut costs; it might be something that might lead to a more sustainable future. But there's a lot of concern, and some of this concern I think is valid, but it's often treated as a non-starter for even discussing this, but it's the fact that China's space program, it does not truly have separate civilian and military space programs. Because of this, there is always the risk, especially since space technology is predominantly dual use.

But the idea is that because of its dual-use nature and the close ties to the military, any interaction with China could potentially be something that will later on benefit China's military. This is certainly the argument that is made by many of those that are against cooperation. China has a well-known track record of stealing and reverse engineering technology. And so, I don't think that is completely unfounded.

But at the same time, all of these same arguments you could have made about the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, and yet, we found areas of cooperation because we viewed the cost of competition in some arenas as too risky. The Soviet Union—authoritarian country, military-dominated space sector—would it have sought to steal U.S. secrets? You bet. All these parallels you will see.

But at the same time, there was this understanding that there were mutual interests in being able to cooperate with one another. You do not see that in U.S.-China space relations. There has been some very minuscule cooperation. I believe China and the United States did share some data on lunar surface conditions for China's far-side landing. But again, this is very low-level and there are real possible risks involved, but at the same time, we have to ask ourselves what the costs are.

You were asking about U.S. plans. The United States has plans to have the Artemis program return to the Moon. The original deadline was for 2024; that's getting delayed and pushed back. I think there will probably be a lot of support from this in the incoming Trump administration.

With all of that said, I think that the United States is going to be very much focused on Artemis, and there's a lot of discussions about what this might mean. There's this optics perspective in terms of the image of returning humans to the Moon and whether you have a Chinese citizen or an American citizen there first.

But at the same time, a lot of this is being framed as, "Oh, well, this is different than before. Before, this was all about nationalism and prestige, but this time there's these very clear economic motives."

I'm still very skeptical of this. There's an idea that there might be lunar ice, which could later be used for fuel and something that could be converted to fuel and then being used to explore other planets in the solar system or other celestial bodies.

There's also the idea that perhaps you could mine certain rare minerals from the Moon. Again, this is all theoretical. We don't know the cost or if there's a viable economic model to do this. The alternative has to be what you can do on Earth. So, what are the costs of going to the Moon, setting up base, drilling for materials that there are in unknown and uncertain quantities, then taking that, transporting it? Is that cheaper than what you can already do with existing methods? And perhaps we will find a way to find an economically sustainable model, but to me, it seems premature for the two countries to be too antagonistic towards one another in this area.

On top of that, there's also this idea about the rules and norms that are being developed to govern, whether that's the traditional how you operate in the space domain or whether that's for lunar operations. I think that there's this image that is often held that the United States and China are diametrically opposed in this area. You'll hear people using this really grandiose rhetoric. They'll say, "Oh, whoever controls the Moon, controls the ultimate high ground," or it’s, "Oh, it's the future of mankind." These grandiose statements that are not based in evidence.

It's interesting, though. We will see this, and I think a lot of that will be promoted heavily by those that are wanting to have their initiatives funded, their company receive funds for. And so, I am concerned that it is going to be an area where we're going to continue seeing competition.

In terms of areas for cooperation, of course, military space cooperation, that's not going to happen. But you would think that perhaps in the civil area, which the critics will say there's no such thing as civil space [in China], but you would think that there would be some areas, some very basic common sense areas where you could have cooperation. And I don't see it happening, and especially not with the new administration. Barring some very significant crisis that really raises the public consciousness about the risk of accidental conflict with the United States and China, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Eleanor M. Albert:  That's super interesting, especially because I think there has been a long-held thought that the space realm fits into this idea of the global public good, right? And yet, it seems that perhaps because of the general tensions in the U.S.-China relationship, this new space where the two are quite active might end up being reshaped as an area of more nationalistic pursuit, which is not ideal when you're trying to avoid conflict.

You alluded a few times to the delineation of China's space program and where it lives, and I wanted to ask you about where space policy exists in the Chinese political bureaucracy. Who's crafting it? Who manages it? How has this changed since this space program started?

R. Lincoln Hines: It's interesting trying to trace this. There are some interesting insights going back to Mao. During the Cultural Revolution, there was actually this incident where you had a mutiny occurring at one of China's space facilities. You had Little Red Guards that don't want the scientific experts being in charge. Then, you see the military coming in heavy-handed and intervening. And so, I think in some ways that that does tie into this legacy of it being under military control.

It was 1992 that China announced the creation of the Chinese National Space Agency. And on paper it seems to be the equivalent of NASA. It's a civil agency for exploration, a public face for cooperation with other countries. But if you look at where it fits in China's bureaucracy, it's a pretty low-ranking organization. It does not have anywhere near the same stature within Chinese bureaucracy as NASA does in the United States.

I would say China's space assets are located in a variety of different parts of its government and its military. Some of the most visible parts of its space program, like China's Manned Space Agency, are under control of the People's Liberation Army. A lot of the individuals involved are former military pilots. The people over the agency are military officers. So, it certainly seems to be
something that's very much tied to the military.

That said, I don't have the data on this, but there are not that many countries that truly have separate civil and military space programs. Part of that is because it is really expensive and costly. The military is seen as having the repository of knowledge for operating these types of systems. Even the United States has not always had the best history with this civil-military distinction. You can see going back to the age of the space shuttle: payloads that are being carried, they're for military research.

With all this said, the distinction is blurred in a lot of countries as it has been blurred sometimes in the United States. The United States certainly is far more transparent than China in this regard. So, this is not to completely draw a false equivalence or something.

But I will also say that with overlapping between military and civil authorities, it also creates some problems, I think, for China. For example, its commercial space sector. China's recently opened up a commercial space port in Hainan Island. This commercial space port: part of it's actually going to help provide a way for commercial space companies to launch payloads, because right now you have to get permission from the People's Liberation Army. Which payload would be prioritized, the one for the military or the one for the commercial space company? I think it creates challenges for China and its ability to pursue certain goals for its commercial space sector, for its ability to have the friendly face that it wants to put on its space program.

Still though, there are people that use this to say, "Ergo, cooperation is never going to happen. Bad idea. Dangerous for the United States." It's interesting when we think about this; I’ll use again the Soviet Union example. The Soviet Union was not this truly peaceful, civil space program that didn't have these ulterior motives. And the United States and the Soviet Union were pursuing a variety of different weapons in space, even detonating nuclear weapons in space. To me, that it's a non-starter purely because of that, doesn't seem to be an ample reason.

What I think is more important is if there is a mutual alignment of interest. People have said this before, but things like arms control, this is not what you pursue with your friends; you pursue it with countries that you have a competitive relationship with. The politics of it domestically in the United States and maybe within China at this point, I don't see there being a lot of opportunity for that.

But in many ways, maybe as China becomes more dependent on space capabilities,  there may be more of an alignment of interest in keeping the space domain sustainable and able to be used, because in a wartime setting and on an all-out war—as Donald Rumsfeld claimed this idea of a space Pearl Harbor in 2001—something like that, sure, maybe China can have a slight advantage by wrecking the space domain, but in all other scenarios, this is something that any user of space has an interest in keeping this domain usable.

Now, to complicate matters, we're not talking about unitary state actors. Do all the different actors of China's government appreciate the importance of space? Does the People's Liberation Army place the same premium on space sustainability as other sectors? That's another question, and I think there's suggestive evidence that it does not.

Eleanor M. Albert: I wanted to draw out a little bit more about this civil-military nexus. First off, thinking about what are the real concerns in this kind of fused space program in terms of the interests moving forward? What might the ramifications be, not just in terms of whose launches get prioritized, but in terms of control, in terms of data access, things of that nature?

R. Lincoln Hines: That's a great question. For the Chinese side, it creates a lot of challenges. First of all, at a very basic level, not cooperating with the largest space power on the planet, that seems to be a net loss. I actually have a piece that just came out in Space Policy called “China's Branding Problem.” I talk a bit about China's tendency to shoot itself in the foot.

Here's where I think it gets pretty concerning: theoretically, in the time of a conflict, there's a possibility, what if the Chinese military repurposed a satellite? Because of this, it also means that possible accidents could occur in the space domain, even without being directed by the Chinese government, [and] have this escalation potential.

A Chinese satellite that slams into an American spy satellite. Was that because it was a poorly functioning commercial space satellite or non-military satellite, or is it because the PLA has directed it to do so? Of course, there would be some type of forensics being done and there'd be context that would factor in. But again, it raises the possibility that you have an accident and you might not know whether that was directed at the behest of the state or if it's something else.

It does create questions about trusting data that's being transferred. It would be interesting to look at this, but if you're a country that has a territorial dispute with China, do you want to use BeiDou, or do you want to use GPS? If you're thinking about potential information that's going to be used by the
Chinese military…

Eleanor M. Albert: Absolutely. On a final note, I wanted to see if you could explain the role that China's space exploration plays in its broader foreign policy, and how it has used it. Whether that’s, say, a branding tool, whether it's actually been linked to its sense of national prestige. How does this program and its ambitions fit into how China wants the world to see it?

R. Lincoln Hines: There are a variety of different ways that China's space program fits into its overall foreign policy. Before I get to the prestige and nationalism part, I will first focus on strictly materially what it can provide China. Part of that is the military capabilities it has to coerce, deter the United States in the event of a conflict in its near periphery. So, from a strictly military perspective, it provides China new tools of coercion.

You also have this idea of it's this economic carrot that China can provide to different countries. It's not the only carrot China provides, but it's part of a broader package for the Belt and Road Initiative to offer these services to countries, or to offer the launch of a satellite. It's another type of string that you can have, that you can pull on when you want to get what you want in world politics.

Diplomatically, China can also use access as a public goods provider in space. It can use access to these different services to be able to get what it wants diplomatically. It's another carrot in China's bag that it's able to use. This allows China an additional tool for trying to articulate what it understands as its interest in the international order. I would say that this goes to the more material uses of space, but from this image or optics perspective, I think that's where it matters a lot for what China hopes to project.

I think that the audiences are both domestic and international, and it's showing that China wants to present itself as a technological leader—that it is at the forefront. In some ways, this brands itself as a country that you want to do business with, that has this high-tech capability. It also, if we think more broadly, is this more latent deterrent effect, gives some type of signal about the sophistication of Chinese military technology.

China also presents itself as a responsible space power. It's a responsible space power that is doing things for the benefits of humanity. China's already offered other countries bids to host experiments on its space station. It's also offering to cooperate on different missions in lunar space. In many ways, China can again champion itself as someone that is beyond, in the language of Chinese diplomacy, the “Cold War mentality.” And it is truly more inclusive in global.

This plays back again into that presentation of China as the champion of the Global South. I think that from an optics perspective that it's powerful for that reason. You can see China investing a lot of capital in those areas. Again, this is only one part of Chinese foreign policy, and whether it can outrun the other elements of its image from its domestic political governance to its inability to have an economic system that can be easily transplanted to other countries; its human rights abuses; all of these things, we've often described as “wolf warrior diplomacy”… Whether China's space program can outrun all of that and do so while having a space program that's closely tied to the military, I think that's a pretty huge bar for China to be able to cross, to be able to help it, to be able to parlay these reputational benefits for itself outside of the countries it traditionally has fairly good relations with.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's great. Anything that you're watching for in the Chinese space area to come?

R. Lincoln Hines: I think that it will be really interesting in the coming years seeing what lessons China learned from the first Trump administration and how it understands prospects for cooperation going forward.

I think another future question is both how dependent China becomes on space and how aware Chinese government officials are of that dependency and whether that leads to a shift in perspectives.

Also, there's been a lot of research on lessons from the Ukraine war and writings now that are starting to come out on lessons that Chinese observers have drawn about Starlink. But what will this incentivize? It seems like a platitude to say this, but people often will say, "Deterrence is not a strategy." But this really needs to be emphasized because there was a lot of excitement about Starlink and its ability to potentially deter counterspace attacks, but deterrence, it's not like, "Okay. Therefore, we solved it. Problem's gone." No, countries invent around deterrence. They find new ways to challenge it. Will we see this incentivizing more indiscriminate attacks against space capabilities? That's another area to look at.

I'll say one last thing. While we all in our heads have this mental image of this really dramatic space war, a lot of what China is pursuing are reversible, soft kill technologies, and it's things that provide a greater latitude for trying to manage escalation. So, what the future is going to look like is not going to be nearly as dramatic as what our minds might conjure.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.