Beijing ‘reaches out’ on safety in space amid signs of military thaw
China has “proactively” reached out to the United States to discuss issues related to space safety, according to the chief of the US Space Command, in a rare show of cooperation between the two rival nations.
Military website Breaking Defence quoted the Space Command’s Stephen Whiting as saying that China had in the past six months reached out to the US “on two things they wanted to talk to us about with space safety-related issues”.
“We think that is very positive and we would like to continue to build on that,” he said on the sidelines of a space symposium last week.
According to the report, the four-star general said the United States routinely shared data on potential orbit collisions with countries including China, but Beijing did not always respond to its engagement.
It was unclear from the report how many times China reached out to the US. The report also did not elaborate on the two issues or when the interactions took place.
Whiting told reporters that the US had long underscored that close international collaboration on orbital data was crucial to prevent collisions and that Washington “would love to have a regular path to share safety data” with Beijing.
The American space commander’s comments came as frosty relations between the two major powers thawed on the back of high-level engagements in recent months.
In particular, military-to-military communications were restored following a meeting between presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco last November.
In December, senior officials from both sides held a videoconference to discuss the importance of working together to “avoid miscalculations and maintain open and direct lines of communication”, in the first senior military communication since engagements were halted in 2022.
More recently, after Xi and Biden talked on the phone this month, the two countries agreed to “advance” military communication, with the defence chiefs of both countries expected to speak “soon”.
On space issues, US and Chinese officials met last October to discuss space situational awareness data – a meeting that was reportedly the result of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s visit to China in September.
Raimondo had discussed space commerce and other economic issues with Vice-Premier He Lifeng during her trip.
China has rapidly ramped up its activities in outer space in recent decades. Whiting earlier said that the country’s military space abilities were growing at a “breathtaking pace”.
Beijing’s outreach to Washington meant that space could emerge as one of a few areas of cooperation between the two global powers, joining issues such as climate change and artificial intelligence.
In another example of potential cooperation in research with China, US space agency Nasa in December gave the go-ahead for its researchers to study the country’s moon samples, marking a notable exception as US law has kept the American agency and its Chinese counterpart at arm’s length. But that development also came with controversy. Nicholas Burns, US ambassador to Beijing, said at a forum that month that he did not believe “the Chinese have shown much of an interest in working with the United States” in space engagement.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) hit back at Burns’ comments, saying that the country welcomed scientists from all over the world, including the US, to apply for lunar samples collected by the Chang’e 5 mission in 2020.
According to state media, a spokesman for the national space agency said Beijing attached great importance to international space cooperation and was “always open to space exchanges” with Washington.
“I don’t understand whether the United States is playing with words or passing the buck,” Xu Hongliang of the CNSA said.
I don’t understand whether the United States is playing with words or passing the buck XU HONGLIANG, CNSA