A short history of China’s rise as a space power

“We have completed all the scheduled tasks and felt good after returning to the motherland,” Fei, the mission commander, told reporters after landing on Earth.

Meanwhile, the Shenzhou 16 crew, which includes China’s first civilian who has gone into space, has taken over the operations of the Tiangong space station. The astronauts will conduct large-scale in-orbit tests and experiments in various fields, including studies related to quantum phenomena, space time-frequency systems, general relativity, and the origins of life.

This photo released by Xinhua News Agency shows a screen image captured at Beijing Aerospace Control Center on May 30, 2023 of the Shenzhou-16 crewed spaceship successfully docking with the radial port of core module Tianhe of the Chinese space station. (Li Jie/Xinhua via AP)

The successful completion of the Shenzhou 15 mission and the glitch-free launch of Shenzhou 16 underscore China’s rapidly growing space programme. In recent years, China has become one of the few countries to reach Mars, build its own space station, and launch an increasingly large number of spacecraft. The country’s future plans are even more ambitious: it aims to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030, and build a base there.

“China’s space program has evolved from taking baby steps in the 1980s to taking giant leaps over the last five or so years. China’s space ambitions and capabilities have grown tremendously: within the last three years, China managed to successfully launch robotic landers and rovers on the Moon and Mars, complete its own space station Tiangong, and announced a goal of landing taikonauts (the name used in the West for a Chinese astronaut) on the Moon by the end of this decade,” Svetla Ben-Itzhak*, assistant professor of Space and International Relations, at Air University (Alabama, US) told The Indian Express in an email.

How has China’s space programme evolved?

The roots of China’s space ambitions go back to 1957 when the Soviet Union successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1, into space. That year, Chairman Mao Zedong declared China would also launch its own satellite. With the help of Soviet technology and scientists such as Qian Xuesen, who studied and initially worked in the United States but was deported for allegedly being a communist sympathiser, the country established its space programme.

China’s first major milestone came in 1970 when it launched its first artificial satellite, Dong Fang Hong 1, from the Jiuquan launch centre in the northwestern province of Gansu. Although the satellite wasn’t technologically sophisticated, it made China the fifth country to send a satellite into orbit after the Soviet Union, the US, France and Japan.

Buoyed by the success of Dong Fang Hong 1, China announced plans to send two astronauts into space by 1973 — the programme, known as ‘Project 714’, it was officially adopted in 1971. The programme, however, had to be cancelled as the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) played out. Zhao Jiuzhang, then chief of China’s satellite programme, was branded a “counterrevolutionary”, and beaten up by the Red Guards, which is said to have driven Zhao to kill himself by drowning.

By the 1980s, China began launching satellites on a regular basis, and entered the commercial market, offering to send satellites into space for companies and other countries for much cheaper than the US.

In 1992, China announced Project 921, a programme to launch and return to Earth a crewed spacecraft. This goal was achieved in 2003, when China became the third country after the US and Russia to use its own rocket to send a human into space: astronaut Yang Liwei spent about 21 hours in space aboard the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft.

In the following years, as China’s economy grew rapidly, its government began to invest heavily in its space programme. Research and development spending on spacecraft manufacturing went up from $22.6 million in 2000 to $433.4 million in 2014, according to figures mentioned in a report by The South China Morning Post.

China sent its first rover, known as Zhurong, to Mars in 2020. However, has been in hibernation since last May due to an “unpredictable accumulation” of dust. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

A string of successes followed. China sent a rover to Mars in 2020, accomplished a soft landing on the far side of the Moon in 2019 and collected and brought back to Earth samples from the lunar surface.

In November 2022, China finished the Tiangong space station, which it had begun building in 2011. The space station currently has three modules, and can support three astronauts, or up to six people during crew rotations. It carries several pieces of cutting-edge scientific equipment including, according to the state news agency Xinhua, “the world’s first space-based cold atomic clock system”.

It is possible that once the multi-agency International Space Station (ISS) reaches the end of its operations in 2030, Tiangong will be the sole in-orbit outpost for scientific research.

What space missions has China planned for the future?

In January 2022, China published ‘Perspective’, which showcased its major achievements in the space sector since 2016, and laid out the roadmap for upcoming space missions. It said, “In the next five years, China will integrate space science, technology and applications while pursuing the new development philosophy, building a new development model and meeting the requirements for high-quality development. It will start a new journey towards a space power.”

Among several ambitious future projects, the one that stands out is its goal to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030. After the launch of the Shenzhou 16 spacecraft last week, Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of China’s Manned Space Agency, told the media that the project had “recently” been kick-started but didn’t give any specifics.

He added, “The project would also seek to enable short-term stays on the lunar surface, as well as collect samples and conduct research,” The New York Times reported.

Notably, no human has been on the Moon since the US Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s. NASA plans to return humans to the Moon by 2025 as part of its ongoing Artemis space programme.

Another important Chinese project involves building a base on the Moon in collaboration with Russia. Ben-Itzhak told The Indian Express that the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) will be constructed “on or close to the South pole of the Moon, with long-term and short-term crew missions planned for the early 2030s”.

“Some of their goals include exploring the Moon to investigate the prospects for lunar mining of various energy resources and materials as well as training humans how to ‘leave the Earth homeland, establish permanent study stations, develop products and industries in the space outside the earth, and set up self-sufficient extraterrestrial homeland,'” she said.

Other future missions include expanding the Tiangong space station, sending another probe to Mars, and eventually sending probes to Jupiter and Saturn.

What does the remarkable expansion of China’s space programme mean for the rest of the world?

As China spent an estimated $16 billion on its space programme in 2021, second only to the US’s space budget of $60 billion, other countries, especially the US, have been watching keenly.

In 2011, the Wolf Amendment was passed, prohibiting NASA from working directly with any China-affiliated organisation — unless explicitly authorised by Congress — for fear of possible theft of secret technology, intellectual properties, and documents.

In January 2023, NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson warned that “Beijing could establish a foothold and try to dominate the most resource-rich locations on the lunar surface — or even keep the US out,” Politico reported.

Some analysts have said a new space race is underway between China and the US, which recalls the American Cold War competition with the Soviets. However, Ben-Itzhak said: “Framing what is currently taking place in space in terms of a ‘space race’ would be too simplistic. There are too many actors – both state and nonstate – and various space capabilities, so such a simple comparison – à la Cold War fashion – would not do justice.”

In a recent article Ben-Itzhak pointed out that even the enormous Chinese spending in space and rocket technology was still less than a third of the US budget for the sector. “US also leads significantly in the number of active satellites. Currently, there are 5,465 total operational satellites in orbit around Earth. The US operates 3,433, or 63% of those. In contrast, China has 541,” she wrote. (‘Is the US in a space race against China?’ The Conversation)

India is among the world’s top seven spenders in space. Ben-Itzhak told The Indian Express that she believes that “regional security dynamics, China’s newfound capabilities in space are likely to push India even further in developing its own space capabilities”.

*The views expressed are those of the author (Svetla Ben-Itzhak) and do not reflect the official position of the US Department of Defense, or of any organization the author is affiliated with, including the US Air Force and the US Space Force.