Media in Russia: How China Conquers Near-Earth Space!

Russian magazine "China Today" published an article by expert Dmitry Kapustin on July 23.

According to "Newsweek," American satellites recently captured "clear" images showing China's growing space activities.

China is implementing several projects to gain an advantage in the aerospace industry.

For example, they plan to establish a network of 16 space facilities in Latin America, expand the Tiangong space station, and send a spacecraft to the moon by 2030.

Now, American satellites often conduct exercises near China, tracking them; it is understandable that Americans are worried.

Kapustin said that for many years, China has been leading in the production of high-speed rail, solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles. Now it is the turn of satellites.

After being state-owned for many years, China learned from Western experiences and opened up the aerospace sector to private enterprises in 2014.

This gave rise to hundreds of companies and startups, which benefited from years of industrial financing and strong support from the military.

In its space exploration program, China focuses on some large-scale projects aimed at inspiring awe and motivation.

Some of these ambitious plans have already been realized, such as the Tiangong space station launched in 2021. Figure 1

"Tiangong" will be equipped with 3D printers, robots, and space monitoring systems, as well as the "Tiangong" space telescope module planned for launch in 2026.

Recent major projects include the "Sun Chaser" space-based solar power plant announced in January this year, and the "Artificial Intelligence Cloud" orbital computing cluster announced in May. Figure 3

Both projects are expected to be technologically decisive.

The "Sun Chaser" project will be another Three Gorges Dam.

This project envisions building a 1-kilometer-long solar panel in orbit, capable of producing 100 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year by 2035.

China's second project, the "Space Computing Constellation," will launch 12 computing satellites, each with a computing power of 744 trillion operations per second. In the future, 2800 satellites will form a global "space computing network," enabling mobile phones to access space computing power and rewrite the rules of human technology. Figure 2

Russian experts point out: Strong industrial policies mean that any similar advanced technology will gain a powerful centralized force advantage that Western countries cannot provide, which will lead to the gap between the West and China only getting larger.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1838387734934536/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author.