In November of last year SpaceQ began a new feature on China’s space economy with the first part of a two part podcast. Part of the goal of our coverage is to discern the differences between the Chinese commercial space sector compared to its western counterparts. Today, a new paper by the Secure World Foundation and the Caelus Foundation discusses U.S. perceptions on this topic and is worth reading.
The paper titled Lost Without Translation – Identifying Gaps in U.S. Perceptions of the Chinese Commercial Space Sector, is available below to read online or download.
Here’s the papers introduction:
U.S. commercial space stakeholders firmly believe that competition from Chinese actors will be an inevitable part of their future decision making. However, beyond this surety there are significant gaps in understanding of how this competitive relationship will develop. For these stakeholders it remains unclear who their Chinese competition will be, what resources they will have, and what rules they will operate by. By comparing common U.S. stakeholder perspectives with discourse and analysis on China’s commercial space sector, this paper highlights where more effort is required to better understand these emerging dynamics. This research challenges common narratives of a Chinese commercial space sector with unlimited financial support, direct government control, and long-term vision. It illuminates barriers to understanding the complexities and conflicts within China’s commercial ecosystem, thus providing nuance for one of the most challenging and heated topics in the space industry: U.S.-Sino space relations. This paper raises more questions than it answers, but these questions will help U.S. researchers, analysts, practitioners, and policymakers better investigate and understand the complex dynamics emerging in China’s nascent commercial space sector.
Here’s part of the papers conclusions:
The research conducted for this analysis indicates that significant gaps exist in the U.S. commercial space community’s understanding of the goals, positions, and approaches to commercial space activities in China. These gaps range from the structure of the aerospace sector in each country, legal uncertainty regarding trade and competition, to fundamental basics such as whether or not “commercial space” activities actually exist in China. It is clear that there are limited authoritative sources of information on Chinese commercial space that U.S. stakeholders both trust and are able to easily access. Discussions of Chinese space activities in U.S. literature sources often emphasize national security aspects, and treat business implications of developments as secondary at best. Interviewees, and literature sources, with personal familiarity with Chinese industry structure describe the importance of relationships and networks in accessing information on activities and developments in China. Our impression from this research is that U.S. commercial space stakeholders are clearly concerned and interested in China’s commercial space activities, but generally believe that they do not have access to meaningful information about those activities.
The reality of commercial space developments in China is more complex and rapidly changing than often described in U.S. literature. The end result of this is a situation of information asymmetry: U.S. commercial space stakeholders generally have less information on China’s commercial space sector than what is actually available; and Chinese space actors generally have more information on the structure and nature of the American space industry than vice versa. There is a clear need for further efforts to better understand the nature of commercial space activities in China. An incredible amount of information exists regarding Chinese commercial space, and conversations with individuals in China reveal a great deal. More effort is required to collect and distill this information to better inform practitioners, policymakers, and investors.
From the SpaceQ perspective, we see continue to research and report on China’s commercial space sector which will include the goal of providing a better understanding of the relationships between commercial players and the role the government has in these companies, if any.