ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Beyond the “Chinese Space Threat”: Reading China’s Aerospace History through Indigenous Sources

• In Event: Shifting Narratives in Space Science and Technology (1)

English Abstract

Over the past two decades, Chinese aerospace activities have, been interpreted in U.S. policy papers through the prism of strategic rivalry. As Hunter’s (2018) doctoral work underlines, this “Chinese space threat” narrative emerged around the 2001 Rumsfeld Commission and has been continuously relayed up to the present day. Although it has been studied, critiqued, and deconstructed in academic literature—notably by Kulacki and Lewis (2009), Zhang (2013), and Sheehan (2013)—it remains pervasive in mainstream media productions in the United States and in Europe, where the lack of direct access to Chinese sources facilitates the circulation of these more accessible interpretive frameworks. By reducing China’s space activities to a mere face-off with the United States this narrative obscures the domestic dynamics, diversity of players and rationale at work within the PRC, as well as its historic foundation dating back to the 1950s.

This contribution revisits the PRC’s aerospace history by drawing on Chinese-language sources that remain underutilized in Western scholarship. It traces the evolution of China’s space activities from their origins in the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” program, through their survival during the Cultural Revolution within strategic weapons projects, to their reorientation under the Reform and Opening policies. It also examines the epistemological and methodological challenges of such research, as institutional secrecy and ideological framing shape both the content and accessibility of local materials. In doing so, it contributes to a broader, more plural understanding of space science and technology, moving beyond Cold War binaries and Western-centric historiographies.

Author

• Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault