Asia getting its legs into the space race

XICHANG, China — The oversized ambitions, secretive military culture and still-impoverished population underpinning China's space program are on full display here at the Xichang space center, the site of last month's moon probe launch.

Two beefy People's Liberation Army soldiers stop foreigners from entering the "world-famous" launch center and museum in Sichuan province, even though all the information on display is available on the Internet and China's technology lags that of its Western counterparts.

Not far away, still within the secure area, two water buffalo lumber along, nudged by a farmer who likely earns less than $10 a month.

"I think China should spend more on space even if we still have a lot of poor people," said Yang Jixiang, a Xichang driver. "It shows our country is emerging and becoming richer. I fully expect one day we'll match the U.S."

Even as China's economic footprints expand on Earth, its growing space ambitions are turning heads aloft, prompting hand-wringing in Washington and a competitive response from neighbors.

The launch of China's lunar probe mission came a month after Japan's Kaguya launch. India, ever wary of its ambitious neighbor to the north, is expected to follow suit early next year.

South Korea plans to launch a lunar probe in 2020 and make a moon landing by 2025 under a new space project that will develop indigenous rockets to put satellites into orbit, the Science Ministry said on Tuesday.

Starry-eyed as they may be over the potential economic windfall, the Asian nations' space dreams also are driven by growing wealth and national pride, analysts say, particularly in the case of India and China, which see these programs as a way to signal they've arrived.

Four years after China became the third nation after the U.S. and Soviet Union to launch its own manned spaceflight, the Asian giant last month announced a new, more powerful rocket. And in January, a Chinese missile successfully destroyed an aging weather satellite.

"We're very nervous about China's capability to interfere with our own satellites in a period of tension or conflict," said John Logsdon, director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. "It's a pretty opaque society, and that applies to space as well."

China has countered that all militaries are secretive, space debris is a global problem and Moscow and Washington conducted many similar tests over the years.

A closer look at Asia's space balance sheet finds China the clear leader in manned spaceflight. Beijing also boasts the most extensive infrastructure, with three launch sites in place and a just-announced combined pad and theme park on the drawing board on southern Hainan island.

Also working in China's favor, said Clay Moltz of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., is solid government backing, its pick of the nation's scientists and close, if far from transparent, links with the military.

"But its poor relations with the United States in space is a major weakness," Moltz added, relative to Japan and India, which enjoy far greater access to U.S. technology.

Japan is ahead of China in areas such as deep-space probes and robotics and enjoys a more focused, high-tech approach. But it suffers from relatively limited budgetary and popular support and almost no help from the military.

"The importance of space had been declining for a long time," said Kazuto Suzuki, a specialist in global space issues at Tsukuba University in Tokyo. "But with the Chinese taking new leadership in the region, a lot of politicians are asking why China can do all this with its technical limits, while Japan cannot capitalize on its technological advantage."

Japan's space program has clawed back from management problems and several embarrassing failures, most recently in November 2003, when a rocket had to be destroyed after a booster failed 10 minutes into the flight.

"Some referred to it as the world's most expensive fireworks display," said James Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "At least you got a bang and a flash."

Japan now has a relatively reliable launch system, but the program has had trouble attracting engineers given competition from other industries and a low pool of candidates because of the nation's low birthrate.

India, meanwhile, has a strong grounding in earth sciences and engineering, an ambitious vision and programs that dovetail well with national development plans. But its program may not garner the budget needed to compete longer term with China, some analysts said.

"China's resources are 10 times more than us," said Dipankar Banerjee, director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in New Delhi. "Compared to the Chinese, we still have a long way to go."

China and India also are jockeying to garner a bigger slice of the estimated $2 billion commercial satellite market, in part by undercutting the price of U.S. and European launches.

China's Communist government also sees its space program as a way to goose patriotism at home at a time of mounting corruption and social unrest.

"This helps bolster the legitimacy of the leadership, which is why they timed the latest launch for just after the recent party congress," said Joseph Cheng, professor at the City University of Hong Kong.

Japan has been a more reluctant chest-thumper in part because of the historical sensitivities of its World War II history in Asia and because it has placed more of its budget and energies with the cooperative international space station.

Also luring Asian rivals deeper into the fray are real and promised economic benefits, in a part of the world where business drives dreams. Launching and operating communication satellites has led the way. "That's where the system really pays off," said Charles Vick, a senior fellow with GlobalSecurity.org.

Further out, there are more elusive returns from space tourism, minerals and even energy derived from lunar helium. "The next template of space activities is going to be space mining," said Lawrence Prabhakar, professor at India's Madras Christian College. "You have two rising powers deficient in basic resources. China and India will go to the ends of the Earth, or the ends of space, to get them."

Information from Reuters is included in this report.