The US poses the greatest threat to security in space and is the main instigator behind the militarization of the realm, China’s Foreign Ministry has claimed.
The remark came after a senior Pentagon official reiterated accusations that Beijing is developing anti-satellite weapons – an allegation denied by the Chinese government.
Washington has made similar accusations against Russia on multiple occasions, suggesting that Moscow has undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities, which it claims are possibly nuclear in nature.
Speaking in late February, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the insinuations as “unfounded.” Moscow has further claimed that the allegations are merely a smokescreen intended to distract from Washington’s own military activities in space.
In April, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the US of refusing to consider Russian and Chinese initiatives aimed at preventing an arms race in space.
Later that month, Russia vetoed a US-Japanese draft resolution at the UN Security Council as the document failed to include some key amendments proposed by Beijing and Moscow. The latter argued that the draft resolution had not been far-reaching enough.
Speaking to RIA Novosti on Thursday, a representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the US was the “most powerful driving force behind the militarization of space and its conversion into a theater of war, as well as the biggest threat to space security.”
According to Chinese diplomats, the US is spreading “mendacious statements” to justify the expansion of its own space military program. The ministry said Beijing was ready to sign a space arms-control accord.
Last week, General Stephen Whiting, head of the US Space Command, warned that the “People’s Republic of China is moving at breathtaking speed in space and they are rapidly developing a range of counter-space weapons to hold at risk our space capabilities.”
Last month, he claimed that China had built a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target US and allied military capabilities,” with Beijing supposedly tripling the number of their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites in orbit since 2018.
In February, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Zhang Xiaogang countered Washington’s allegations by saying that the US itself “defines space as a ‘combat territory’, develops and deploys offensive space weapons… and even maliciously tracks and dangerously approaches other countries’ spacecraft.”