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This is a bonus issue for the week.
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What China wants in Space and why
On the 17th June 2021, after years of careful planning and execution, the China National Space Agency sent 3 astronauts to their Tiangong space station, starting a new page in their space exploration effort.
On the same day, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a national security mission was also successfully completed.
This juxtaposition of the 2 superpowers’ space missions was all too familiar. The same thing used to happen frequently in the 60s which ended badly with one superpower’s collapse. Is there going to be another space race?
I’m going to put forward my proposition right now. Yes, I think the new space race may have already begun. But the strategic interests of both superpowers are different this time that the new space race is not going to be who gets to the moon first. This time, the space race is going to happen on earth, with more emphasis on gound applications like 5G & Satcom.
But how did we get here? The Economist has a great illustration of all space launches since the 1950s and if you look closely, China was not in the picture at the beginning. It was largely dominated by state-affiliated launch providers from the US and the Soviet Union. Close to 140 space launches were performed every year in the 60s, higher than even what we have in 2020.
The first successful Chinese orbital launch was in 1970 but they were caught up in domestic political struggles, for the uninitiated out there, the Chinese were busy fighting the cultural revolution then. They have little time for this and indeed their launch frequency shows, reflected by the dark red color in the above image.
Meanwhile, on the main battleground of the space race, the US was winning. It turns out, the Soviet Union wasn’t as powerful as it claimed to be and the US got to the Moon first. But as the US realized that what matters to the cold war was to deliver a better life for her people, and shifted more resources away from Space, as seen by the sharp decline in launches after the middle of the 1960s. The Soviet Union doubled down with more launches throughout the 70s, 80s, & 90s. In the end, the US won.
But if that is the case, shouldn’t China be lagging far behind the US in space development? Well, indeed they are.
The Chinese only established CNSA, their equivalent of NASA in April 1993 and started building their space systems from scratch (dark red in the image above), meanwhile, the US was on a higher starting point, performing essentially reusable trips from ISS using the Space Shuttle. On top of that, being much further ahead, the US employed a different strategy, it gradually privatized the industry. During this period, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and then SpaceX took over the launches, the state providers phased out. In Europe, Arianespace also became a powerful private contender.
On the other side of the Pacific, the Chinese might have started late, it also had its superpower - State planning. Here is a newspaper that went viral on Chinese media last year, it was dated in 2005. It spelled out CNSA’s plan to retrieve moon samples by 2020, and it was juxtaposed against Japan’s plan for a moon base in 2025, and the U.S. plan to have boots back on the Moon no later than 2020.
The US goal has now shifted to 2024 and unless Japan can pull a rocket out of its hat, 2025 for the moon base is hardly achievable. But you know who did it on time? The Chinese. They've landed on the far side of the moon and retrieved samples in 2020. That gave them credibility, this is rare among governmental plans.
Now with their newly built space station, Tiangong occupied with astronauts, their plan is to build a moon base by 2030 and man on Mars by 2050. Their rising trendline cannot be ignored, this is evident in the number of launches China performs per year, which is projected to be close to 40 this year as shown below.
This is the strategic power shift that got us to where we are today. The Chinese accession and the US relative decline in the public sector. Of course, the U.S. private sector is booming and potentially the biggest competitor for the Chinese, in many ways, the US is doing a lot better, but a clash is happening.
What have I learned?
Before the 80s, the space race is state-sponsored, no private space companies are in the market as it requires gigantic funding and they have nothing monetary to gain. Competition is between the U.S. & USSR.
China’s presence in space is almost “non-existent” before the 90s. We can think of their missions as demonstration missions in this era, much like the North Korean missile tests. After the founding of CNSA in 1993, China’s capability took a dramatic turn, catching up with the U.S. quickly.
Right now, China is experiencing its highest space boom in history. CNSA launches more rockets per year than the U.S., it has grown its Moon and Mars presence, it also owns a space station called Tiangong. All signs are heading towards a 2-superpower world in the space sector, with China and the U.S. leading. There are also 160 Chinese space startups, indicating a potential clash in the private space offerings.
From 2015 onwards, the U.S. space launch sector is dominated by SpaceX. Boeing is still hanging on due largely to its influence over congress. The trendline is clear, private launch providers are taking over. Whereas for China, state launch providers are still dominant.
What is the space race about, past vs. now?
It's important to understand that the space race between the US and the Soviet Union was never about space, it was about the economy and winning people’s minds and hearts. It was abundantly clear to the US once it got to the moon in 1969. The US launch number declined sharply afterward because they know, what people really wanted was a big house with lovely families.
The situation is similar for China. In 2011, the US congress singled out China in the Wolf Amendment and banned NASA from cooperation with China, citing national security concerns, so the Chinese had to go it alone with the space stations, which got us to where we are today.
You see, the whole reason why China and the US are having this geopolitical tension is not because of China’s rising space capability, because if space capability is what matters, Russia is still more powerful, and there is no cold war rhetoric against Russia.
It was the fact that China is now a formidable economic competitor, it has delivered for its people in the past 40 years, increasing its GDP per capita from 800 dollars in 1999 to over 18,000 dollars today in PPP terms. It was the fact that China is making 5G technology better than everyone else.
Space race represented the peak of technology in the 60s, competition in space was about the future, about who built the most sophisticated machines. The US responded with the Saturn V, and it was a complete success.
But in the 21sth century, space technology no longer presents the full picture. In addition to space, the contest is also about who gets to dominate the micro-space, the best semiconductors. There is also 5G technology, high-speed rails, AI, big data, and other industrial applications. There is also the financial services sector which is now much bigger than manufacturing in terms of GDP generation. And here, the competition will be about currency and the Chinese new digital yuan. The competition is getting very broad and very complex.
Space is one of the foundational components still. One of the critical techs is communications satellite networks. This is of course a vertical that SpaceX is in, and it is important for 5G deployment in the consumer sector and many industrial sectors such as precision manufacturing and remote mining operations, these require low latency communication networks that only LEO satellites can provide. Imagine the possibility of managing a mining drill remotely from the comfort of a control center, not only will this increase efficiency, but it will also make the job safer.
In short, the space race is about seeing high-tech space applications through a national security & economic contest lens.
So what does China want and Why?
According to CNSA’s website, it has 8 categories of offerings as shown in the image below. From top left to bottom right, they are 1)launchers, 2)satellite products, 3)landers, and rovers, 4)spacecraft, 5)deep space exploration, 6)High-resolution Earth Observation System, 7)manned space flight, 8)Beidou Satellite Navigation Systems, the icons are quite self-explanatory.
According to CNSA’s White Paper: China's Space Activities in 2016 (Chinese + English version), CNSA’s purpose is,
To explore outer space and enhance understanding of the earth and the cosmos; to utilize outer space for peaceful purposes, promote human civilization and social progress, and benefit the whole of mankind; to meet the demands of economic, scientific and technological development, national security and social progress, and to improve the scientific and cultural levels of the Chinese people, protect China's national rights and interests, and build up its overall strength.
And CNSA’s vision is,
To build China into a space power in all respects, with the capabilities to make innovations independently, to make scientific discovery and research at the cutting edge, to promote strong and sustained economic and social development, to effectively and reliably guarantee national security, to exercise sound and efficient governance, and to carry out mutually beneficial international exchanges and cooperation; to have an advanced and open space science and technology industry, stable and reliable space infrastructure, pioneering and innovative professionals, and a rich and profound space spirit; to provide strong support for the realization of the Chinese Dream of the renewal of the Chinese nation, and make positive contributions to human civilization and progress.
I highlighted the keywords above. There are 3 key purposes for CNSA, on one hand, it is about building “a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”, on the other hand, it is about upholding China’s national security and developmental and economic right, in addition to “enhancing the understanding of the Earth and the cosmos”.
Where do CNSA’s mission conflict with the U.S. interest?
From the U.S. perspective, the real conflict with China comes from its purpose of upholding China’s “national security and development & economic right”. Translating to space applications, this means China wants to stay abreast with the U.S. space capabilities in all fields, surpass if possible. This means if the US has reusable rockets, China wants one too. Simple and straightforward. Hence, the competition boils down to who can do it better.
Lei’s comments: here lies the problem, in a competitive free market, Boeing’s success is Airbus’ failure. And as I said many times, all businesses want to be monopolies, and all countries want to help their domestic industries to become dominant. It is true for the South Koreans and Japanese, it is equally true for the Chinese and the Americans. The most powerful country gets to dominate most industries. We all remember James Woosley, former director of CIA’s Wall Street Journal Op-ed piece on Why America spies on its European Allies, he reasons that the CIA helped Boeing spy on Airbus because "Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official." This is of course hypocritical and in line with the CIA’s role, but the larger point still is this,
in the international sphere, the so called “free market” ideals only function for non-strategic industries like low end electronics and apperals. For strategic industries like 5G and SatCom, the “free market” ideal really means competition between governments instead of between companies.
Hence, when both the Chinese and the US space agencies emphasize the importance of supporting their national security and economic right, competition is unavoidable. The question then becomes to what extent is competition constructive. Economic competition is fine, even sanctions & embargos are fine if the competition is between countries, but we need to guard against ideological elements to avoid the disastrous consequences of the collapse of the USSR. If you are Microsoft, you will never give your technology to Amazon or Apple, this is essentially sanctions if we see governments as the main competing units, but I do not like when the U.S. or the Chinese government become hypocritical and claim to stand for “values” when in fact, it is about strategic national interests.
As of today, the Chinese space station is already in operation, there are more modules to go, more missions and more astronauts to be transported. On the other side of the Pacific, SpaceX has built the most extensive SatCom network. The two superpowers have come to a crossroads. They have an important decision to make, if competition is unavoidable, how can they make sure the struggle between the Titans is constructive rather than destructive for the world.
The rest of us are watching.