ARTICLE: Chinese Test Anti-Satellite Weapon, By Craig Covault, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 01/17/2007

A shocking surprise to some, but to me this is part and parcel of China's modernization effort designed to threaten our high-tech ability to threaten their somewhat lower-tech ability to threaten Taiwan's lower-tech ability to make good on their threat to declare independence. But people have to remember that America regularly "attacks" (really, is it an "attack" to blow up your own targets?) missiles with other missiles, and that capability says to China, "we think we can do dangerous stuff to you and NOT be subject to your missile threats." You can say, "But America only makes such tests to prepare for true bad guys!" And China will say the same thing. But this is routine hypocrisy for us: all our "tests" are to preserve "peace" (meaning our ability to project power militarily anywhere in the world without effective resistance from anybody), while all their "attacks" are clearly designed to threaten global stability. This is the essence of the primacy argument of the neocons: America must not only have the biggest gun, but the only gun worth mentioning. If anyone reaches for one, they are automatically bad unless they're already in bed with us (meaning we sell it to them). Is this a grown-up attitude WRT China? No, strategically it's infantile, given the everything else going on in China, the world, America, and between us and China. But the hawks want their war calculations held strictly within the context of war and nuttin' else. That way, our "requirement" to weaponize space can proceed apace, with our side trusting the Chinese space hawks to continually return the favor tit for tat. Yet another implicit U.S.- Chinese strategic partnership that keeps the mil-industrial complex on both sides happy. Thanks to Eric Hansen for sending this.