From Shenzhou 22's rapid emergency launch to the surge in China's commercial space sector.
Where exactly is China now in its space journey?
Welcome to Road Today, the panel discussion with Mi Ge-anna in Beijing.
It's been a landmark week for China's aerospace progress.
The country has successfully carried out its first-ever emergency manned space launch with the Shenzhou-22 just 16 days after Shenzhou-20's return was delayed by suspected micro-debris.
Meanwhile officials announced that over the next five years, China will launch four frontier science satellites aimed at exploring the origins of the universe, space weather and life, with breakthroughs expected in dark-era cosmology, solar activity and exoplanet detection.
At the same time, China's commercial space momentum is also accelerating.
The National Space Agency released its action plan to back commercial space firms and encouraged them to pursue international cooperation over the next two years.
Data shows, China's commercial space market grew from 38 billion yuan in 2015 to 23 trillion this year, with an annual growth rate exceeding 22 and projected to approach 10 trillion by 2030.
So what kind of technical capability has China demonstrated under emergency conditions?
How do the national program and commercial sector reinforce each other?
And with AI rapidly integrating into aerospace, are we entering an era where intelligence become the decisive edge?
Today, we'll explore those questions with the three distinguished experts.
Andy Mock, professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Quentin Parker, professor and director of Laboratory for Space Research at University of Hong Kong.
Zhang Fan, associate professor of astronomy department of Beijing Normal University.
Gentlemen, great to have all of you on our show.
We really are in a new space era, and I think it's fair to say that China is now a major player in the sector, especially with emergency crewed launch, Shenzhou 22, rushing up with supplies after Shenzhou 20 got delayed by suspected debris impact.
Professor Zhang, let me start with you.
What emergency response systems just proved themselves, and how do they help China go deeper into space safely, right?
So this uh, this time there's a whole procedure being tested out.
So, from the discovering the problem that came from the routine checking, just before the shinjo 20 crew was supposed to return on their own craft, and then they found this little crack on the window and the whole diagnostic procedure went after that.
You know people looking from the inside and there's robotic arm looking on from the outside, and then the full risk assessment got carried out.
So basically, it's safe to stay up there for the craft, but it's not safe enough for people to travel in it through atmosphere with all the burning and vibrations.
So the decision was made to launch a replacement for the Shenzhou 20 crew to come down first using the next crew's craft from the next rotation crew.
And then the replacement that's got launched this time is for the next crew to come back in six months' time.
So this whole procedure not only tested how you handle these kind of emergencies, how you do risk assessments, and also the fast launch of the Shenzhou-22 that's just been down basically test the ability for you to do a quick turnaround launch.
So the Shenzhou 21 was just launched 10, 14 days ago.
So you can imagine what happens at a launch site.
So naively, the rocket is already ready.
That's China's backup procedure, that whenever there's a rocket launch, there's always a backup already in place.
The rocket assembly plant actually has two bays just for that purpose.
But having the rocket ready is a different thing from going through old procedures, old through all the checks and all the details to have a safe launch.
And the teams actually worked around the clock this time and got the new rocket up really quickly so that the Shenzhou 21 crew, if any emergency happens, Shenzhou 21 crew has another sort of craft can come down on.
So this is really a stress test and they demonstrated the ability.
The whole procedure worked really well.
They actually got to keep the Shenzhou-20 craft to have it returned and examined in detail.
Professor Parker, your perspective, what does a mission like this actually test in real terms?
And what does it tell us about China's ability to run regular, reliable space station operations and astronaut rotation?
Yes, like the previous professor, I've been extremely impressed by what's been able to be achieved in such a short period of time, given that it's not just a rocket that has to be ready.
It's the capsule that actually is the escape craft, as it were, that has to be ready.
Then it had to be, because it was going up empty.
They had to pack it up with the useful materials and cargo for the crew that's just rotated up there.
But you know, I think the main thing for me, I mean I've just got an article out today in the China Daily all about this whole episode.
That just came out this morning.
And so it's quite timely in that respect.
Hong Kong version of the China Daily is that it's focused on minds I think not just of China, but of all space-faring nations on the existential threat of space debris.
This is a 1 billion RMB capsule, basically made inoperative through the impact of a very tiny piece of debris.
Now, I'm not sure exactly how bad the damage was.
I haven't seen any photographs of the cracks and fissures.
It was unlucky that it struck the window.
I mean.
But so you know, if you do try to go back to Earth with a cracked windscreen, you can imagine in the heat of reentry and the vibrations that the whole thing would probably blow out and kill everybody on board.
So that was a no-no.
Also, it's not easy to replace.
I mean it's a sophisticated machine bits of kit and they have to be put in place very carefully and properly and it's unlikely that they could have repaired it on board without the right equipment and stuff.
So I'm not sure what's going to happen to this capsule now.
I heard that they might just deorbit it, so that's just a burn-up of a 1 billion RMB capsule, or they might use it for experiments, so I'm not sure what's going to happen.
But it just demonstrates to me just how robust now the processes that China has in place are for this kind of thing.
They're able to dedicate thousands of man hours to getting the replacement rocket and capsule ready in time in quick order.
If you think back to what happened on ISS with the two astronauts that were stranded for eight months, when the capsules thrusters and helium leaks prevented it from returning.
And then China's turned it around in... just nine days or so.
So that's quite remarkable.
So I think it demonstrates the capacity of China now, how it can actually respond to emergencies very quickly and gradually and get it done flawlessly effectively.
So I think that's it.
But behind all of this story is, you know, is what's caused it in the first place.
And I think that is what Focusing the minds now globally, of all space bearing powers not just China, but America Russia Europe India, these space powers is like what are we going to do about the debris problem?
If this can happen, it's happening on an increasingly regular basis.
And the threat of the Kessler syndrome is growing by the day.
We definitely will delve into the challenges later in our show.
But reflect on this first-ever emergency manned space launch.
Professor Mark, on the commercial side, how much has China's state-led space program helped build today's commercial space ecosystem in China?
And are we talking tech transfer, engineering talent, or industrial chain maturity?
So China is trying to accomplish three things at once in space.
So first prove it can run safe, resilient operations even under stress with this emergency launch debris risk.
As we just heard Quinton Parker talk about space station support.
But the second thing is races.
It's to your point.
It's to turn state-led program into a coordinated ecosystem where commercial players, as well as reusable rockets and industrial policy, lowers cost and widens capabilities.
And then finally, a move beyond a hardware race into a contest over intelligence and stewardship.
So use, i'm sure we'll talk about, and as well as new science, missions to understand the universe, manage debris, keep orbits usable for everyone.
Circle back a little bit to this particular event.
You know, this emergency launch wasn't a stunt.
It was a full system stress test, anomaly detection, rapid decision making, as we heard.
Both of our previous speakers talk about logistics under pressure, the ability to safeguard a space state.
You would safeguard a power grid.
So space used to be a place you visited.
Today, it's a place you have to run safely, continuously and predictably.
So I think what this shows us is that this is actually turning into infrastructure, where it's not just about technology, but really process as well as governance.
Professor Zhang, how would you assess the foundational role of China's state-led space program in shaping today's commercial space sector in China?
First of all, I'd like to emphasize the state-owned sector is actually commercialized in the way that their state-owned enterprises, but it's not one team.
There are two major companies and each one has a whole lot of little institutes.
They're actually different companies.
They compete against each other for old contracts.
So, for example, all the people usually consider commercial sort of reusable rockets.
There's one of the state sectors and companies doing that as well.
So they're already in the commercialized space.
And also, besides the enterprises, the funding provided by the state sector.
They have a very long term horizon and they they're nurturing their nurseries.
It's very different from very so speculative.
In other countries there used to be this called SPAC special purpose acquisition companies that that goes around and hype up the the price of the commercial private space companies and then dump their stocks afterwards and leave those companies in limbo.
That kind of thing would not happen with the state-backed funding.
There's also the transfer of technology and there's also the sharing of the test facilities.
And this is vital because for private companies trying out completely new technology, being able to test thoroughly is the key.
Substantial test facilities is available.
Some other companies, very famous companies, would probably not have so many blow-ups, so their costs would have been reduced.
So this kind of infrastructure help has been one of the reasons why Chinese private companies have been trying to catch up at a speed that they haven't managed to do.
Also, there's also the launch site.
You know, they're building a huge number of them in the Hainan Island Wenchang site.
Because the first sort of visible possible profit, though, is to launch constellations.
That means tens of thousands of little satellites for communications.
And to have those launched.
You need.
You know obviously, a huge number of launches of rockets and the launch site would be a be needed.
And the space sector is already looking ahead to that need and already been building the infrastructure needed.
So all you know, it's nurturing from all sides.
So the space sector is really sort of propping up the private companies doing everything that they can possibly do themselves and giving them a chance.
This is Road to Debt.
We'll be back.
Hello, I am Dr Digby James Wren, a political analyst and international relations scholar specializing in China area studies.
World Today offers unmatched in-depth perspectives on China's politics economics business, technology and society.
World Today's team of reporters and contributors provides valuable information from all of the world's major economies.
I hope you can join me on World Today for the very best insights and news from China, on China, and help to build a better understanding of China's role in the world today.
Professor Parker, what's your take on this?
And speaking of commercial launch capacity, China's reusable Juche 3 rocket is gearing up for its first flight.
If successful, it would be China's first operational reusable carrier rocket.
How big of a milestone is that?
Before I get on to that point, I'd just like to go back to the previous speaker about this.
Because China, just on Tuesday, launched a two-year plan to establish itself as a global leader in commercial space.
And that's by 2027.
So there's an action plan for higher quality and safe development commercial space over that period and it includes an awful lot of things.
So it's worth looking at that document because there's about 600 commercial uh aerospace companies in china at the moment.
Some of them have emerged from state uh state entities, that's true uh, but some are independent or pseudo-independent, and there's lots of them now.
Not all of them will survive obviously, but i think it shows.
I mean, even here in hong kong we've got about 70 aerospace companies of one form or another that have come together.
And so there's a huge interest and there's vast amounts of investment potential as well.
So I think you know the key policy initiatives from that document are opening up national aerospace RD projects.
So going from national aerospace R&D to private entities.
And again, there is a focus on the reusable rockets you've just mentioned, but also intelligent satellites with AI on board, integrated communication for navigation, remote sensing, where China leads the world actually in remote sensing technology and number of satellites devoted to to remote sensing.
Looking at setting up a national commercial space development fund really important and mandating, as a previous speaker mentioned, shared access to state-owned test facilities, which I think is important.
Now, I'm going to Hainan Island in just over a week.
And yes, the Wenchang commercial spaceport next to the state one is gearing up.
And you know.
You look at Elon Musk and the turnaround time for his launches and how he's been dominating rocket launches ever since about 2021, when I thought China was going to really get the world record.
All of a sudden, Elon Musk, SpaceX just sort of ramped up like crazy.
And so you have this situation we have today. and all its Falcon rocket success.
Professor Mark.
It has drawn comparison with SpaceX, the Jutia 3, and Elon Musk himself expressed respect for this line of innovation.
What's your take on this?
Does Jutia 3 suggest that China is now entering the fast lane of reusable launch technology?
It absolutely does.
And, you know, I think first, It is a symbol, Dutra 3 is a symbol of cost curve discipline.
So we all know that the biggest challenges, the technical challenges of going to space, is the astronomical cost.
So the ability to bring that down is very, very important.
And reusability is seen, of course, as one very important way to do that.
But it also, I think, is a test of whether Chinese commercial firms can operate at the technological frontier, not just in catch-up mode.
And then finally, I think it's a bridge between the national program's reliability, culture and commercial agility.
So absolutely, I think that this could certainly change the economics of space access.
And I think the other point that's important to point out here, the two very, very philosophical differences between the US approach and the Chinese approach.
So the U.S. approach really covers first.
And the risk in that model is can you keep coherence and strategic direction when the biggest, most influential players are private, not public?
Professor Zhang, compared to SpaceX's Falcon rockets, what might G-23 do differently?
You mentioned Elon Musk was very friendly, saying, you know, encouraging them on.
And in return the land space, the companies responsible for Zhuqiu 3.
They admire Elon Musk like really to no end.
And their bucket.
Actually, on the outside it looks and it operates on the return sort of a manner.
How do you land and what's the support system on that?
It's basically the same as Falcon 9, but it uses some technology for the next generation Starship that SpaceX are using.
So it uses a stainless steel sort of material for the body of the rockets because it's cheaper and it works better at low temperature.
And also it uses oxygen methane sort of as fuel and oxidizer.
The reason for that is because methane is a small molecule, it burns more thoroughly, so the engine doesn't build up so it's the reusability is further improved.
So it's basically a blend of the current best and the next generation of SpaceX rockets.
So SpaceX doesn't do this version of Falcon 9, doesn't do the stainless steel version, because their ambition is much larger.
They want to go to Mars and sort of build straight up, to build a very large rocket.
But land space is more moderate in their goal.
So they use basically older technologies that can further expand reduce cost.
So if this works, it has the potential to be a viable, even lower cost rocket than Falcon 9 for the lowest orbit.
It can't go very far yet, but that's apparently their goal.
So Falcon 9 is ridiculously cheap.
In 2020, the last number I saw was their cost per kilogram is under $3,000.
And China's other launches currently is something like $14,000, $15,000 per kilo.
So you can see why reusability is so important.
If you want to do stuff in space manufacture, build data centers up there the launch cost is really the main cost.
So that's why they're doing these things.
There's indeed still room for China to learn, grow and refine its capabilities, and that's actually what makes this stage of development so exciting.
As Professor Parker mentioned earlier, China's space agency has released the Action Plan for High Quality and Secure Commercial Space Development from 2025 to 2027, which envisions a coordinated industrial ecosystem, stable research and development and production frameworks and a significant expanded market by 2027.
Professor Zhang, how should we interpret these goals?
And what are the strategic pillars of China's commercial space roadmap?
There are quite sort of detailed goals and action plans in that.
It's not just some vague sort of generalizations.
For example, in terms of goals aimed to sort of break down the so-called silos.
So the national team, the state-owned sector and the Private companies.
They don't do things separately, hopefully.
The goal is for them to mesh up together.
For example, some payload may be private, but the launch vehicle is state.
So there's lots of regulatory hurdles that needs to be overcome to achieve that.
Other goals like resource sharing.
We already talked about opening up not just the test facilities but also the national laboratories, other ground facilities for the private companies to use.
There's actually a major transformation in Chinese tech and the Chinese science and technology sector in general that people are now realizing.
Besides the sort of academia and usually state backed sectors, the private companies are really the drivers of technology.
So a lot of the resources, the state's resources are now sort of injected into private companies.
And this folds into that general trend.
There's also the intellectual property commercialization aspect of it so opening up the the licensing and joint venture routes for the state sectors and you know patents and stuff to be to be utilized by private sector also in all sort of industries standardization is important aims to to establish sort of common rules for all players in the Chinese space sector.
So the equipments can talk to each other, for example.
As for the pillars, that means, I guess, detailed action plans.
So the one most important thing is the state facilities will be opened up for private companies.
There's the industrial expansion.
So they do national sort of commercial space fund, like what China did with the semiconductor industry.
There's a national fund that goes and look for industry leaders and sort of nurture them.
Regulatory reform.
This is quite important because Currently for private space companies to launch vehicles to launch a rocket in China, it's a whole headache procedure.
It's very different from the US where the FAA basically says, if you're okay, you're okay.
So in China, it's currently a maze you have to go through.
But the pillar that's mentioned in this particular action plan is that they're going to establish things like whitelist, which means if If it's not forbidden, it's basically well, if you're on the list, then you can go without actually case-by-case sort of application.
Decisions have to be made on individual cases.
Professor Mock, could you paint us a picture of what 2027 might look like in practical terms under this recent released plan?
Well, you know, I think it certainly indicates... ambition.
And I think ambition grounded in reality and historical experience.
So you know, I think, to blend a little bit not just the commercial aspects of this but also, I think, the scientific research part of this, because I do think there's some overlap is that I think there's three things.
So first, China's showing.
It intends to reach a higher level of scientific seriousness, if we may call it that.
So to be in the first tier of cosmology, heliophysics, astrobiology.
Second, we all know how important data is for AI, but for scientific research and for business success.
China intends to have its I guess its global stature match its civilizational weight.
So you know again, I think The one lesson we can always draw from anything looking at China technology is that it is a top-down integrated, comprehensive approach that is very holistic and again, as we see, with concrete long-term goals as well as intermediate milestones.
Thanks, Professor, and all of our panelists for those valuable insights.
This is World Today.
We'll be back after a short break.
Welcome back to Road Today.
I'm Guiana in Beijing.
Let's continue our discussion.
Gentlemen, rapid development indeed brings shared global challenges, especially space debris.
Some experts warn that Earth's orbit could become so crowded that access to deeper space becomes severely restricted.
Professor Parker, how serious is this threat and how it might constrain human access to the moon, Mars and beyond?
Yes, I think...
I've just enjoyed listening to both John and Mok very much.
They're very erudite and very knowledgeable, so it's been a pleasure to share this forum with them.
But for me there's one big elephant in the room about all of this exciting developments in commercial aerospace and in space stations Plans.
You know there's tremendous plans afoot, you know, both through the Artemis program for the moon and the International Lunar Research Station for China.
You know there's a Trangia-7 mission going up and we at Hong Kong you have a little wide-field telescope actually going on that along with our ILO partners.
You know, it's the only American participation in any of the Chinese lunar missions, actually.
This is a Steve Durst outfit in Hawaii, independent commercial outfit. so not so controlled.
And so that's very exciting.
But against all of this backdrop, of these tremendous developments and commercial opportunities you know I'm talking of tens of thousands of satellites going up in mega constellations from Elon Musk already and 1000 sales and two others planned from China and elsewhere is that people are kind of not really so aware of the existential threat to all of that that's posed by the well-known Kessler syndrome idea, which is a cascading catastrophic collapse of the entire low-earth orbit ecosystem by pieces of debris such as that which struck the window of the Shenzhou 20 capsule.
And so, you know, and also went through the robot arm of the ISS a few years ago and et cetera.
So there's about 150 million pieces of debris smaller than a centimeter which we can't track at the moment.
About 50000 pieces of greater than 10 centimeters that are being tracked.
The information on all this tracking isn't shared.
You know you look at Elon Musk's maneuvers of his Starlink satellites in the last couple of years.
The number of maneuvers to perform has gone up by a factor of several in just one year, partly because there's more satellites up there now, but partially because they've had to move out of debris more often.
Part of the problem is that there's not enough detail on the ephemeris of orbital debris.
We don't know exactly what the exact orbit is and therefore there's more error and therefore we have to have a greater safety margin.
So just our ability to track debris to a higher level of accuracy will help us to maneuver satellites only when they really need to be maneuvered and not when they might need to be removed, so that'll save fuel and be more efficient.
But also it's about how to remediate the debris, and there's no actual cost-effective solution for that at the moment.
I mean EPFL with my friend John Paul Kniep, through a company called Clear Space with ESA, are looking at remediating a hundred kilogram rocket stage next year to as a technology demonstrator, but it's not cost-effective.
It's an extremely expensive mission to basically deorbit a piece of junk.
So but You know, so the world is waking up to the seriousness of this in terms of the space powers.
And they said, oh, well, you know, we've got regulations now.
So our satellites will deorbit themselves after five years.
So that's great.
I says, well, that's great.
But we're putting up thousands more satellites and we're bringing down.
So the threat and risks. of this are increasing all the time.
And, to be frank, if we don't solve this problem within 10 or so years and some of the modeling I've seen has the Kessler syndrome enacting as early as 2035 or between 2035 and 2050 is that it's pretty much game over.
Everything up there in low Earth orbit, which is where most satellites currently are, will basically be destroyed in a wave of destruction over a period of about a week.
And then you know, we'll go back to living our lives in the way we were in perhaps the late 1950s, without you know the technologies that we rely on.
People don't understand just how much of everyday life now depends on ones and zeros of data going up and down from various satellites from, you know, from the internet, to the way we do business and where we do banking, you know, and all these kinds of things and we're just talking about oh, we're going to put data centers up in space, it's better.
We're going to put thousands and thousands of satellites with data sense.
Oh, we're going to put up satellites.
We're going to beam electricity back to earth from the, from the solar sails that we're going to have up there to to do that.
But it's kind of ignoring.
It's not an elephant in the room.
I can't get a herd of elephants.
We have to solve the debris problem sooner rather than later.
How do you build this challenge, Professor John?
It's quite a thread, yes, as Professor Parker was just mentioning.
So basically the Kastner syndrome is, once you have collisions, the debris will cause more collisions and so there's a cascade like a, like a snow avalanche, and then the whole space will be filled with lots of debris.
Then you can't safely go up there anymore and we're all locked down on Earth and obviously that's terrible.
And the chance of that happening is increasing because there's this issue that the space resources, the orbital resources, they are on a first-come, first-served basis, which is why all these different companies from across the world, they're all launching huge constellations.
Even before, maybe it's fully profitable in terms of the contract, the services they provide.
They just need to occupy the orbit first.
And that causes a problem, especially not just the number of them.
They're from different companies.
They cross, crisscross in their orbits.
Uh, they all have to be low low, very low um to be able to receive and send signals um to communicate with the ground.
So so they're all crawling in the same space, and then they're not necessarily talking to each other um, so they.
They even the the most established um company that there was uproar.
So basically, the current Starlink doesn't necessarily tell you where all its satellites are.
Because they have so many of them, they claim to be doing the dodging avoidance, collision avoidance themselves. sort of automatically, so they don't necessarily tell you where their satellites are.
And let's book people, let's book Chinese space station has booked a lot of space telescopes into, into quick actions, evasive actions.
And as you can imagine, if all the companies do this, they don't tell each other.
And then all of their satellites are just like maneuvering, trying to avoid each other without knowing what each other is actually gonna do to avoid itself.
You know, it's like when people trying to cross the hallway they're always sort of going left and right and eventually running into each other.
There's necessarily there's have to be a lot more collaboration.
Forceful regulation, sort of international regulation.
Professor Mock Speaking of tech bottlenecks when dealing with space debris.
Earlier news show China's Shijian-21 verified space tug technology, launched in 2021, designed as a space servicing and debris mitigation satellite, and China promote the concept of a shared space future.
What role, in your opinion, can China play in global space governance, and what technologies are being developed domestically to improve space sustainability today?
Well, that's a great question.
And I think that China, of course, can play a very, very important role in several areas.
So you know, just to briefly summarize what professor fan and professor park said um, you know this is a very important problem.
Um, you know there's, i guess, three challenges that have to be overcome.
So first, our tracking limit.
So it's difficult uh, or maybe impossible, to reliably detect debris smaller than one to five centimeters and, as we've been talking about, you know, this can cause very significant problems.
The second is legal constraints.
And then finally, high removal costs.
So here, I think China can play two roles.
So one is in technology.
So we see what the Sturgeon 21.
You know other things like this.
It's not just cool tech, but whether you know it's tugs, nets or lasers, but the ability to remove debris is very important at an acceptable cost.
And I think this is one area not just for China but, you know, for the United States, perhaps the GCC countries as well.
You know they've also become very interested in space, but less visibly.
But maybe more importantly, I think, is China's approach to what we think of as global commons management.
And we've seen China, you know I think, make remarkable strides and contributions um in this area.
You know, whether we're looking at the belt and road initiative uh, the shanghai cooperation organization um, etc.
That the ability to not only lead technologically but also offer a framework, and i would say the credibility uh for a multilateral solution uh is very important again, i think um, you know, given China's track record in advancing space technology, you know, without the cooperation or support of the leading space power of the United States, you know, I think speaks to China's technological prowess.
And then when we see China's ability to coordinate complex multilateral challenges on Earth, I think we can also see that very plausibly being extended into space as well.
We know, addressing space debris requires international cooperation, but today's geopolitical climate complicates such efforts.
Let's talk about what the Western media portrayed the China-U.S. competition in this sector.
Professor Mock, the US has kept China's aerospace development in check for decades, blocking advanced engines and space technologies.
China had to start from zero and build its capabilities on its own.
So today, how does China's aerospace tech really compare with the United States?
You know again, I think you know China's made enormous advances, but you know, as Professor Fan said, in terms of large scale commercialization, you know cost is maybe not everything, but it's very, very important.
And here it's very early days for the commercial commercialization of space in general.
But I think, you know, China has opportunities to catch up.
But if we look again at the historical record in other industries, one of China's strengths is diffusion.
When we think about the development of breakthrough technologies, it's not just invention and innovation, but diffusion as well.
I think China's demonstrated strengths here.
China's demonstrated enormous capabilities in cost effectiveness.
Again, if this translates to this new sector, I think the future looks very bright.
It looks like, given how China's closing the technology gap with the US, that there's not much else the US can do to slow China down.
And I think in fact we've seen in a number of technology areas, China has taken the lead in certain areas.
And I think the US is looking to China for solutions, technological solutions.
This could be in the pharma industry, with certain anti-cancer treatments clearly, with battery technology, with companies like CATL, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
This is World Today.
We'll be back.
Professor Parker, would you like to weigh in on this?
Some say China and the United States appear to adopt different models of aerospace development today.
China's national program with commercial coordination versus the US model of commercial-led development with national backing.
Do you agree with that?
What strengths and risks does each model carry?
I'm a great fan of the way that China has emerged in the last decade or so as a true global leader in many areas of science actually, as Professor Mock was describing.
There's a great article actually in Nature by Kerry Brown.
It says, Why the World Must Wake Up to China's Science Leadership.
And so you know.
It's a question of recognizing the reality of the current situation in what China's entire science infrastructure is delivering.
Now, if you look at the number of patents coming out, look at number of papers in top journals like science and nature, what you'll see now is a very significant fraction of them are chinese and in fact, in terms of patents, china's now exceeded, i think, the combined pattern numbers of america and japan combined in the last year or two.
So you know the tech areas where the expert, you know the old trope that many people in the West still seem to believe in is that all that China is good at is copying the West and stealing ideas and doing that.
But that's gone way beyond that now.
Part of it is because of the way America has treated China with the Wolf Amendment in the space area in particular, which meant that they're not allowed to go on the International Space Station as a partner.
Yet Russia is up there.
And now, so what did China do?
It basically built its own capacity and technologies, as was said, pretty much on their own.
And now they've emerged as a major space-faring nation in the own right with a tremendous capacity, the only nation to be able to go to the far side of the moon and bring back you know which anger six moon rock and nearly two kilograms of moon rock from the far side.
Very complicated mission, you know.
They've gone to the Mars, are going with Chan 1 3 back to Mars, sample return.
Maybe beating the Americans now because of the NASA funding issues and crises that are enveloping the space program in one way or another in America, unfortunately.
So this gives opportunity to nations like China to step up.
I mean India is stepping up and it's got its own quite active and vigorous space program which is already, you know, with a Chandrayaan series to the moons, et cetera.
So a lot of stuff's happening out there.
It's a politically complex situation geopolitically, I think, and there's no, and things are almost changing daily.
On that basis,
And so, but China can't plan that way.
It has to, you know, look at itself, look at its own interests, and that's what it's doing.
And it has every right to do so, to develop itself in the way it can, as best it can.
And, with the world being as tricky as it is at the moment, they're looking at building relationships with the BRICS and with other nations.
They're just trying to do their best, I think, to engage where it's appropriate, to build where they can, to progress as fast as they can in key strategic areas for the benefit of their people.
And so I'm kind of as an Australian person outside looking in at what's happening, I'm kind of in admiration of what they've been able to achieve in pretty short order actually across multiple domains of science, not just in what we're talking about today space, but in pharmaceuticals, in robotics, in AI, in chips and all sorts of areas where they need to have some national security for themselves and be more self-reliant.
So, yes, and echoing what Professor Mock said, Yes, I am impressed.
And the world view I have is that we must, in the West, wake up to China's science leadership, what it means for us in our own areas of leadership and where cooperation and collaboration and competition are not mutually exclusive.
And we need to look at them in an integrated way, in a more robust but more sensible and strategic way than we're currently doing.
That's very intriguing.
Professor Zhang, how would you make the comparison?
Right.
I think the approaches by the US and China, they're actually quite complementary to each other.
So as you mentioned, which state sector is leading or just giving resources, like in the US case.
So the approach is that the US tends to set up this a lofty goal, sort of uh.
They're more idealistic, they want to do something big and then they try to develop the technology towards that goal that at the first uh, when it was first announced, it seems to be out of the reach of the current technology.
China is very realistic.
It goes completely did the upside down to that process.
So china selects the, The goals, for example, what kind of a telescope, what kind of a satellite will launch?
It all depends on technological capabilities.
Whatever is capable, if it's capable of doing, it would do that.
So the consequence of that is that the US and the West in general they're very good at blue sky stuff from zero to one, completely coming up with new things.
And so far China has been good at going from one to a hundred, sort of once something has been demonstrated to be working.
And here you have to mention SpaceX and their trailblazing.
And whenever they come up with something that it's not like, people have no idea that reusable rockets are going to be cheap.
But the Nobody knew before they tried it that it would actually be reusable for a sufficient number of times to be commercially viable.
Now they've demonstrated that.
So the Chinese companies come and iron out further details.
So there's a whole bunch of companies that would refine this approach and make it more, even cheaper, more commercially viable.
So there are very different approaches.
So China is now gradually migrating towards the more blue sky approach, at least trying to.
Gentlemen, let's delve a bit further into the U.S. development in this sector.
U.S.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order recently launching a new federal effort called Genesis Mission to supercharge American artificial intelligence research, development and scientific applications.
The core goal of the mission also includes integrate AI with space exploration.
Professor Mock, does this suggest that we are shifting from a race of rockets and engines to a race of algorithms and data sets?
I think it absolutely does.
And I think you know these are inseparable in that, you know, if we understand artificial intelligence as a general purpose technology like computing or like electricity, you know, of course we would integrate AI tools into technology, space exploration or the commercialization of space.
But you know, I think it's important to to point out here to perhaps I'm more optimistic than Professor fan on this, in that you know the US and China do have complimentary approaches.
But that what this means, I think, and what we are seeing is, especially as the United States comes to respect China as a peer economically technologically, militarily and diplomatically, some of these previous political obstacles to cooperation may go away.
Because, again it's important to point out, it's not that China does not want to cooperate with the US, but the US has held back from cooperating with China because its goal is to maintain technological lead in space exploration and semiconductors etc.
And once it is seen that that is no longer a feasible goal, you know, logic would suggest that, you know, wouldn't it be better to work together?
So I think, from that perspective, I'm more optimistic about the future of space exploration.
And, Professor Parker, what's your thoughts on this?
How do you see the AI-driven aerospace in the years to come?
Yes, with Professor Mok there, I would want to be as optimistic as he about this, but On everything I've been seeing in the last few years on the current administration and what's going to happen towards the end of this administration, I'm not so optimistic that the hawks and belligerence in the administration and just a large fraction of the way that American Sea China is as optimistic as that, unfortunately.
I wish there would be much better cooperation and collaboration for the benefit of a planet not you know.
Put aside national interest to some degree.
Let's save the low Earth ecosystem for everybody, for all space-faring nations and for humanity.
Same with the climate and climate science and all these things.
There are some grounds to be optimistic because the logic is irrefutable and the benefits mutual are there to be grabbed.
So all of that is true.
And normally that would be enough to motivate and to focus minds into better cooperation and better processes for international cooperation and mutual benefit win-win, as people keep saying here in China.
But I'm slightly less optimistic because of just the evidence on why everything is going on.
But yes, in terms of AI, I've talked about AI a lot.
I had a big interview about it yesterday.
There's a lot around it that people don't understand.
I use it myself.
Basically, it's nowhere near as good as people think it is at the moment from the tests I've done.
But the risks of it are still there in terms of truly emergent AI.
But in terms of what it can do practically, it's efficiencies, it's savings, it's decision making on rapid time scales.
It used to take a long time.
It's job saving in terms of saving jobs in certain areas and getting rid of them in others.
And so you know there's also and things are happening at a quicker time and AI is emerging at a rate that is beyond the scope of the infrastructural and organizational process in governments to take account of, to govern and to look after, through regulations and frameworks which are robust enough to stop certain actors from using AI in the farthest ways, through deep fake videos and all the rest of the nonsense we see.
I'm now looking at, when I look at YouTube.
There's so much AI nonsense up there now and created for bad reasons you know to do with right-wing and left-wing extremists.
Blah blah, blah.
So all this is happening.
It's difficult to regulate.
Professor Zhang, for a final brief reflection, we know China's AI development is also accelerating.
Could you describe the current level of AI integration within China's space programs?
And where does China position AI-driven aerospace within its national priorities today?
Right.
So currently there are some sort of more like pilot programs trying to integrate AI into the space program.
Currently it's very rudimentary.
There are some space stations management, for example, the docking mechanism has some AI component and the system monitoring, sort of trying to find problems, trying to assess the situation generally inside the space station, it uses AI.
And also, for example, when China goes to the moon, sort of with Chang'e 8, there's going to be a bunch of AI robots, sort of basically trying to learn.
They're called embodied AI, so basically AI.
Instead of learning from content on the internet in digital form, they begin to have a body, to have a robotic body to explore the physical world and learn from that.
And some robots will try to learn what it's like to move around on the moon, trying to find the best way to turn its wheels differently, because the lunar dust is so, so weird, and the robots will be talking to each other.
So there is an active effort to incorporate AI into the space system.
And also, as Professor Parker mentioned, the management of the vast number of satellites in the constellation.
That's a must.
It has to be done by AI.
There's no way humans are going to be able to track them all and try to figure out a way to best avoid each other.
In terms of the future development.
Obviously the national constellations is a national infrastructure goal and that go ahead to the AI infrastructure will have to go in there.
And for space sort of deeper space explorations.
Also, AI is a must because humans, for all the inspirations you know the manned space program give us, humans are not really built for space.
We're built for a tiny layer of you know, you climb a mountain, you got mountains, sort of heights.
You get a high altitude sickness.
Our parameter for our existence is so, so narrow that we're really not suitable for going very far out.
So any sort of space acceleration, the probes and everything, because humans can't go physically.
And because the you know, when you go far away then the speed of light and the cosmic scale is tiny, it's really slow.
Can I just make a Please.
Okay.
You know.
To respond to Professor Parker's point about not being so optimistic about the US, I would like to offer a Winston Churchill quote where he said we can count on the United States doing the right thing after it has exhausted all other possibilities.
I know that quote.
And I think what it means here is that, as China's moving from launching rockets to governing a space civilization uh, combining emergency robustness as we've been talking about commercial liftoff, frontier science ai, and debris governance into one system of systems, we're moving from a launch race to a learning race and china's space program, as a state-built spine with commercial muscles, i think may be able to help address the bottleneck, the real bottleneck of orbital congestion and governance.
And then finally, I think, China's frontier satellites say we're not only a space faring nation, we want to be a knowledge power as well.
Indeed.
The US may see China's space progress as a threat, but the reality is that humanity faces shared challenges and a shared future, and that means major powers need to find ways to cooperate, even while competing.
Thanks to all of our panelists.
Really appreciate your enlightening perspectives.
Andy Mock, professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Quentin Parker, professor and director of Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong.
Zhang Fan, Associate Professor of Astronomy Department of Beijing Normal University.
That's all the time for this edition of World Today.
I'm Guiana in Beijing.
Thank you so much for listening.
Until next time.
