Cold war revisited

IF ANYONE doubts that the United States and Red China are engaged in a new cold war—despite those legions of trinkets manufactured by Chinese children and sold in the U.S. each year, or the regular appeasement of the Chinese government by American corporations—just look up.

A new space race is underway, and like the Soviets did some 70 years ago, the Chinese are using space as a canvas for propaganda. This time, it’s not new photo ops of Chinese astronauts in orbit or hints at plans to develop the moon. (A Chinese lunar rover continues to collect data on the far side of the moon after three years.)

The mainland Chinese government, ever so briefly, claimed to have possibly detected signals from an alien civilization.

On June 14, Bloomberg picked up a piece from the online Science and Technology Daily, a Chinese state-run outlet. The story cited the chief scientist of an “extraterrestrial civilization search team” from Beijing Normal University and reported that China’s huge Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, one of the most powerful on the planet, had picked up some unusual signals that couldn’t be identified.

Three days later, the original report was gone. And when CNET tracked down the actual SETI scientist who works with the telescope, Zhang TongJie (who was misidentified in the original report), the truth came out.

“These signals are from radio interference,” he told CNET via email. “All of the signals detected by SETI researchers so far are made by our own civilization, not another civilization.”

We can forgive the ChiComs such a rookie mistake. Their overeagerness to one-up the West led them astray. Now we can only hope Mr. Zhang isn’t paying a price for answering an email.