A new study has concluded that space solar power is feasible, but leaves unanswered who should proceed and how. Taylor Dinerman argues that China, with its voracious appetite for energy, can play a role as both a customer and co-developer.
As it grows in economic strength, China has its gaze firmly fixed on the heavens, devoting more and more energy and resources to developing its space program.
A senior Chinese official has accused foreign intelligence agencies of causing "massive and shocking" damage to China by hacking into computers to ferret out political, military and scientific secrets.
The Chinese government is implementing a wide series of measures to reduce the amount of debris left in orbit by Chinese rockets and satellites, and to develop a space-surveillance tool to determine what is in orbit, Chinese space-debris experts said.
China is starting to ramp up its scramjet propulsion work -- an initiative that will benefit high-speed missile programs. Over the next several decades, the scramjet work could eventually provide China with a tactical hypersonic global-strike capability beyond the country's strategic ballistic missile force. The U.S. has similar goals for its own growing scramjet program.
A commercial satellite image appears to have captured China's new nuclear ballistic missile submarine. The new class, known as the Jin-class or Type 094, is expected to replace the unsuccessful Xia-class (Type 092) of a single boat built in the early 1980s.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that China is concealing its spending on weapons programs, including technology to disrupt U.S. space efforts.
China now has the capability to jam the Global Positioning System, widely used by both the military to, say, guide precision weapons and by civilians to, for example, provide timing for telecom networks, according to the annual Defense Department report on "Military Power of the People's Republic of China".
China's military is preparing for electronic warfare by setting up information warfare units that are developing viruses to attack enemy computers and networks, according to the Department of Defense's annual report to Congress.
The US is increasingly concerned about China's deployment of mobile land and sea-based ballistic nuclear missiles that have the range to hit the US, according to people familiar with an imminent Pentagon report on China's military.