China’s Final Frontier
Posted by John Malloy on 02/21/2009
The Chinese are latecomers to space, and desperate to catch up. Two years after shooting down a satellite, they stand accused of stealing US secrets. A new arms race has begun.
The Chinese astronauts (left to right) Jing Haipeng, Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming carried out their country’s third manned space mission last September
Dongfan Chung had lived in Orange County, California, for 45 years. The 72-year-old, known as Greg to his friends, led a quiet life with his artist wife and son. Quiet, that is, until dawn on 11 February 2008, when the FBI came to his home to arrest him on eight counts of espionage.
Chung, who had worked for Rockwell International and then Boeing – both companies involved in operating the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station for Nasa – is accused of sending confidential information on the US space programme to China over a 30-year period. His trial begins on 6 May. If convicted, he could face spending the rest of his life in jail.
What could have made him do it? The indictment issued by the District Court of California includes extracts from a letter Chung wrote in 1979 to a professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China: “I don’t know what I can do for the country. Having been a Chinese compatriot for over 30 years and being proud of the achievements by the people’s efforts for the motherland, I am regretful for not contributing anything . . . I would like to make an effort to contribute to the Four Modernisations of China.”
A list found in Chung’s possession showed the extent of the knowledge to which he had access; it included manuals on aircraft and space shuttle design as well as military specifications. It seems he would simply take documents out of the office, hide them at his home, and then travel to China to present the information, sometimes using his wife as a foil; he pretended on one occasion that they were going there at the invitation of a Chinese art institute. His hosts were grateful. Gu Weihao, an official of the ministry of aviation in Beijing, signed off a letter to Chung saying: “It is your honour and China’s fortune that you are able to realise your wish of dedicating yourself to the service of your country.” Chung was playing his patriotic part in the construction of the new China, ensuring the motherland gained that defining accessory of a great power: a space programme.
The country’s space story begins, as the China National Space Administration white paper puts it, “50 splendid years” ago under Chairman Mao with the development of a ballistic missile programme. Over the next generation, space and nuclear research continued and expanded. By 2003, China became the third country, after the United States and Russia, to launch a manned mission into space; the first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut took place last September. Footage of the event shows Zhai Zhigang waving a Chinese flag as he drifts against the black sky, attached by an umbilical cord to the Shenzhou VII spacecraft. The red flag catches the sunlight reflecting off the earth. Zhai’s voice crackles: “My country, please have faith in me. I and my team will finish this mission.”
Zhai became a national hero. He had shown the world how quickly China was progressing. In a speech shortly afterwards, the then Nasa administrator, Michael Griffin, acknowledged the achievement. “I personally believe China will be back on the moon before we are,” he said. “I think that when that happens Americans will not like it. But they will just have to not like it.”
Forty years on from Neil Armstrong’s famed first steps, moon landings still capture the imagination. They give countries geopolitical status, prized membership of an elite club. But China’s lunar aspirations tell only half the story. All space research develops technology that can have civil or military uses – satellites, for example, can monitor weather patterns or troop movements. The lack of distinction between the two in China causes the US “quite a bit of concern”, according to Jing-dong Yuan, director of the East Asia Non-proliferation Programme at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. There is, he says, “no organisational separation between the civilian and military” parts of the Chinese space programme. Other space-faring nations, such as the US or India, make the division institutionally clear, but in China the whole show is run by the People’s Liberation Army. As Yuan says: “The Chinese military understands that modern warfare depends on how you use space.”
No wonder the case of Greg Chung prompted a strong reaction. Ken Wainstein, then assistant attorney general for US national security, warned of “the threat posed by the relentless efforts of foreign intelligence services to penetrate our security systems and steal our most sensitive military technology and information”. It was, he said, “a threat to our national security and to our economic position in the world”. Says Alan Paller, a cyber security expert who advises the US government: “We’re talking about the equivalent of the following thing happening at every major defence organisation: a guy is walking into the building, copying files and taking them away. They’re not taking 25 files, or 50 files, they’re taking millions of files.” …
www.newstatesman.com
Posted by 
