Experts Warn CCP Space Program Is ‘Direct Military Threat’

A Long March-2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert in China on June 17, 2021, the first crewed mission to China's new space station. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) activities in outer space present a unique threat to international security that U.S. leadership and the public are only starting to fully appreciate, experts say. Of key importance are the CCP’s blurring of civil and military pursuits and its efforts to exploit U.S. satellite networks.

Central to the CCP’s attempts to dominate space is its national strategy of military–civil fusion, in which the regime seeks the wholesale erosion of any barrier between the civilian and military domains.