Want China Times
Staff Reporter
September 11, 2014
Description: H-7 fighters return to base in north China after taking part in the Peace Mission 2014 military drills in Zhurihe, Inner Mongolia, Aug. 29. (Photo/Xinhua)JH-7 fighters return to base in north China after taking part in the Peace Mission 2014 military drills in Zhurihe, Inner Mongolia, Aug. 29. (Photo/Xinhua)
A Chinese military expert has refuted recent reports that the People’s Liberation Army has established a new aerospace branch focused on military operations in space, reports Duowei News, a US-based Chinese political news website.
Last month, prominent Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun said that the new “Aerospace Force” will be the fifth service branch under the PLA along with its Ground Force, Navy, Air Force and Second Artillery Corps, adding that it will also lead to the creation of an Aerospace Office under the Central Military Commission. Notably, the original article has since been deleted, while the Pentagon refused to comment on the report.
Then on Wednesday, Tokyo-based political news website The Diplomat said while it cannot confirm the validity of the Yomiuri Shimbun report, the claim seems “plausible on the face of it” because Chinese president and Central Military Commission chairperson Xi Jinping had called for the creation of a “new type of combat unit” and urged PLA officers to “to speed up air and space integration and sharpen their offensive and defensive capabilities” during a visit to an air force base in April.
As additional circumstantial “evidence” to back up the claims, the Diplomat pointed to reports from state-owned China Daily emphasizing China’s need to better integrate space and air capabilities, as well as reports from California-based security firm CrowdStrike and PLA papers translated by the US government, which said that China believes “space will surely be the main battlefield of cyber warfare” and that the PLA intends on disabling America’s GPS satellites in the event of a conflict.
However, an expert familiar with China’s army building activities told Duowei that there is no way that China would remain silent about something as important as establishing a new branch of the PLA.
The unnamed expert goes on to say that it is clear Japanese media did not fully understand the Chinese source it obtained the story from. When Xi spoke of integrating air and space integration back in April he was referring to a powerful “air force” as opposed to an “aerospace force,” the expert said, adding that Xi actually urged speeding up the development of new combat capabilities in the air force rather than setting up a completely new branch. Whether China should establish an aerospace force still requires rigorous debate, the expert added.
While acknowledging that China has indeed been focusing on aerospace development in recent years, its experimentation in this field have not yet caught up to the US and other western countries, the expert said, adding that China has only conducted a single anti-satellite test so far.
