China plans a new moon probe in response to possible return there by U.S.

Forget Pluto, comets or Mars — let’s go back to the moon

This has been an exciting past month for space exploration. We’ve seen a historic landing on the surface of a comet and the launch of Orion, NASA’s next-generation spacecraft. And, starting in January, we’ll begin to see gorgeous, never-before-seen imagery of Pluto, thanks to the New Horizons spacecraft. There’s certainly reason for optimism. According to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., the Orion launch unofficially marked “Day One of the Mars era.” So here’s what might seem like a backward-looking proposition: Sending a manned mission to the moon — not to Mars — should be the primary national space priority for the United States.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The biggest reason, quite simply, has nothing to do with the level of today’s science or technology and everything to do with national pride and global influence. If America doesn’t go back to the moon and eventually establish a permanent lunar base there, someone else will. And whichever country is most active in moon exploration will have the biggest say in the moon’s future development. The most likely candidate to do so is China, which soft-landed the Jade Rabbit rover on the moon at the end of 2013. Moreover, Chinese scientists have floated various draft proposals for a manned mission to the moon as early as 2025. To make that a reality, China is working on developing new rockets for manned moon missions. And there are plenty of other contenders — including Japan, India and Russia, as well as a host of private companies — who are actively looking for ways to get to the moon. Just look at the number of private teams — 18 — still remaining in the Google Lunar X Prize competition.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Fine, okay, you say that NASA has seen that, done that, been there, and has no need to send a man or woman to the moon to prove the United States is still No. 1 in space and a global technology leader. That’s essentially the Buzz Aldrin argument for thinking big and moving on to Mars. After 45 years, there’s no need to relive past glories, as the legendary Apollo astronaut has repeatedly pointed out. The United States, he says, shouldn’t be spending billions to launch a new Apollo-style program. But even fellow astronauts, including man-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong, have advocated for more focus and direction to NASA’s human spaceflight program, and that usually means less emphasis on going to Mars.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And there are reasons for going back to the moon that go beyond just national pride. Based on the learning and experience we have on sending manned missions to the moon, we can prepare for manned space exploration elsewhere. We’re just not ready for manned exploration to Mars quite yet. This is the argument recently made by celebrity astronaut Chris Hadfield, who, it could be argued, has 45,000 different reasons why he should be considered a space authority. Speaking at a Guardian Live event at the Royal Geographical Society in London Dec. 7, Hadfield took issue with the recent focus on manned missions to Mars. His words were stark: “If we started going to Mars any time soon everybody would die.” And then to clarify, he said: “We don’t know what we are doing yet. We have to have a bunch of inventions between now and Mars.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In short, once we establish a manned lunar program, and perhaps even a permanent lunar research base on the moon, we can use that to build experience and knowledge for going further, maybe even to Mars. As Christopher McKay, a planetary scientist with NASA, has pointed out, there are six good reasons NASA should build a research base on the moon. We need to practice living on the moon before we can realistically think about forming colonies on Mars, he says. We also need to learn how to assess the health impacts of living in space.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And there’s another reason — a purely commercial reason — for going back to the moon. A manned lunar program could open the door to new industries such as space tourism and establish the moon as a refueling or way station for longer trips elsewhere, such as to asteroids. Plus, there is now growing speculation that resource extraction on the moon that wasn’t feasible a generation ago may now be possible, opening the door to the creation of new mining industries. For example, the Chinese are reportedly looking into the possible mining of resources like helium-3, which could theoretically be used to fuel nuclear reactors.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Sending a manned exploration mission to Mars by the mid-2030s is a wonderful idea. It’s the type of big idea that resonates with the public, with NASA and with the government. Back in 2010, it was the type of big idea that was part and parcel of the Obama Administration’s message of hope. But is going to Mars within the next decade “hope” or “reality”? Even NASA admits that it will be at least seven years before there are any crewed missions in the new Orion spacecraft, which puts us at 2021 before anything really big happens in the “Mars era.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It has now been 45 years since a man last walked on the moon, and that’s far too long. It would be embarrassing if China or another of the “Asian space race” nations ends up doing something America should have done a long time ago. When we look up at the moon at night, we should think first and foremost about the legacy of America’s brave moon innovators, not about lost chances.

Photo: Chinese lunar probe provides uncommon perspective of moon and Earth

A Chinese probe, which was designed as a test-run on the road to a full lunar landing, has successfully completed its trip to the moon and back. On its return to Earth, the probe captured a view rarely seen in photographs. The image shows the back side of the moon in the foreground, with the Earth off in the distance in the upper left, 240,000 miles away. The successful return of the probe is just another step in China’s lunar exploration mission, the goal of which is to land a probe on the surface of the moon, collect samples, and then return them to Earth. China has now successfully launched a probe, landed one on the moon, and returned one to Earth. It will take multiple probes to complete the mission, each one used in a different part of testing. The final probe will complete the sample collection and return to Earth. Universe Today writes about the test probe (called “Little Flyer” in Chinese) landing on Saturday:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _h/tDan Satterfield, AGU_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Never mind Mars: Explorers set sights on the moon for new exploration

The moon is laying out the welcome mat. Last month, China placed a lander and a rover on the lunar surface, ending a 37-year gap in visits to our closest celestial neighbor. But the Chinese spacecraft won’t be alone for long. A caravan of international and privately funded missions is on the horizon, including several efforts hoping to prospect for resources to aid future human missions. China had initially said that its Chang’e-3 spacecraft would end up in the moon’s Bay of Rainbows. But the actual site it will explore may be even more interesting scientifically: The Chang’e-3 lander touched down in a dark plain called the Sea of Rains, on the far eastern edge of its targeted landing area. This vast volcanic plain appears to contain some of the youngest lava flows on the moon, as well as rocks ejected by impacts that could be parts of the buried lunar crust. Armed with cameras, a spectrometer and ground-penetrating radar, the mission’s Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, rover might help to piece together the moon’s volcanic history. India, Japan and South Korea also have plans to send landers and rovers to explore the moon in the next few years, although they have not yet stated their destinations. Meanwhile, the United States, Russia and several private ventures hope to reach the moon’s poles by 2018. Orbital data suggest that the polar rocks and craters are filled with water ice, which could be harvested for astronaut hydration, radiation shielding and even rocket fuel. If moon mining plans come to fruition, future lunar outposts could become rest stops for missions headed to Mars and beyond. **— New Scientist **

China launches its longest manned space mission, aims to explore ‘more deeply and more broadly’

BEIJING — China’s march into space took another step forward Monday, as two astronauts embarked on the nation’s longest manned mission. They aim to dock with an orbiting space lab and remain aboard for 30 days, a crucial step in China’s plans to operate its own space station by 2022 and part of a much broader space program that has ambitions to put astronauts back on the moon and land an unmanned rover on Mars. State-run China Central Television (CCTV) showed the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft taking off from a launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China at 7:30 a.m., carried by a Long March 2F rocket. The astronauts were seen on board saluting seconds before takeoff. They will dock with the Tiangong-2 lab in two days and conduct scientific experiments, testing computers as well as propulsion and life-support systems, CCTV reported. After the launch was declared a success, Defense Minister Fan Changlong read a congratulatory message from President Xi Jinping that called for China’s astronauts to explore space “more deeply and more broadly.” Xi also encouraged them to “constantly break new ground for the manned space program, so that Chinese people will take bigger steps and march further in [their] space probe, to make new contributions to the building of China into a space power.” The astronauts are Jing Haipeng, who will turn 50 during the trip and is flying his third mission, and Chen Dong, 37. “It is any astronaut’s dream and pursuit to be able to perform many space missions,” Jing said Sunday, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. China is spending heavily on a space program that aims to catch up with the United States and Russia, both established space powers, and outpace Asian rivals India and Japan. As in all those countries, the space program in China is a source of great national pride. China was excluded from participation in the International Space Station, largely because of U.S. concerns that its space program had a strong military component. Instead, it aims to build its own space station and hopes that other countries also will launch missions there. It insists that its motives are peaceful. “Shenzhou 11 is a new beginning. It marks the imminent end to the exploratory stage of China’s manned space program,” said Zhang Yulin, deputy commander in chief of China’s manned space program and deputy chief of the armament development department of the Central Military Commission. Zhang said China hopes to carry out regular space missions after 2020, sending astronauts, engineers and even tourists into space several times a year, Xinhua reported. It will be the only country operating a space station after the International Space Station is retired in 2024. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003, and 10 years later it landed the Jade Rabbit rover on the moon — the first “soft landing” there in nearly four decades — although the rover later developed technical problems. It aims to land a rover on the far side of the moon by 2018 and send an unmanned vehicle to Mars by 2020, emulating the U.S. Viking landers in 1976. Ultimately, it hopes to land an astronaut on the moon by about 2025, more than five decades after American Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The current mission, lasting 33 days, is more than twice the length of China’s last manned mission, in 2013, which spanned 15 days. Shenzhou means “divine vessel,” while Tiangong means “heavenly palace.”

Why it matters that Japan is going to the moon

Only three nations have ever soft-landed on the moon – the United States, the Soviet Union and China — and now Japan wants to be the fourth. Japan’s equivalent of NASA – the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) – has established a target date of 2018-2019 for an unmanned moon landing and a 2025 target date for a manned mission to the moon. While there’s the obvious prestige factor for Japan of getting to the moon, the move has another important implication — it could lead to the more rapid exploration of the moon’s commercial potential.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico There are enormous innovation benefits from having as many players as possible competing to get back to the moon. More competition means more innovation, especially when you take into account Japan’s rich history as a space-faring nation. If you add Japan’s moon bid to the number of international teams that are competing in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition, you suddenly have a much richer competitive landscape than if only NASA were trying to get back to the moon. And that could lead to some truly out-of-the-box ideas that go well beyond the space tourism idea mentioned by JAXA last week. While the chance to view the Northern Lights or a “full Earth-rise” from outer space is a “nice to have,” there are a whole host of other ways that Japan’s innovators could take advantage of the wealth of knowledge gained from Japan’s earlier lunar orbital missions in order to create and build out exciting new commercial concepts.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For example, one moon exploration concept that Japan has floated is a plan to ring the moon with solar panels as a way to power the Earth. The concept — known as LUNA RING — was thought up by Japan’s Shimizu Corporation as a unique way to power the planet with clean energy by the year 2035. A small army of robotic workers would construct a massive ring of solar panels along the 11,000-kilometer lunar equator. These solar panels would capture solar radiation from the sun, transform it into energy, and then beam it back to receiving stations on Earth in the form of microwaves or laser light.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Where would Japan get that lunar robot army? Glad you asked. Earlier, the Japanese came up with a $2 billion plan to construct a lunar base for hulking, 660-pound robots on the moon’s surface. Originally announced in 2010, this lunar robot idea was projected for the year 2020. Obviously, that’s not going to happen, but the idea of Japanese lunar bots eventually swarming across the moon’s surface in the future is, at the very least, thought- provoking, especially given Japan’s competitive advantage in robotics. At some point, that robot colony would give way to a manned colony (that is, if the robots let us).    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And once there’s a permanent manned lunar colony on the moon, that opens up other commercial space exploration opportunities — including a possible trip to Mars or nearby asteroids. For now, the asteroid missions probably are more feasible. JAXA has already taken a ride on an interstellar asteroid and returned the orbital craft safely back to earth. NASA described the legendary Hayabusa mission – in which just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong – as “well beyond remarkable.” And now Japan has a follow-up asteroid explorer mission, known as Hayabusa2.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Even if Japan’s lunar exploration ideas are technologically feasible – and that’s certainly open to debate (hard landings on the moon are much easier than soft landings) – there’s still the pesky matter of cost. A lunar mission could cost $80 million or it could cost $8 billion. Nobody really knows. The Japanese space agency confirmed that a cost target of $126 million was one possibility, but has also confirmed that the price tag could balloon as high as $12 billion. That lunar robot base idea was projected to burn through $2 billion in R&D; funding alone, and the development cost of a manned Japanese program could be north of $1 billion.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico To make these astronomical costs pay off, Japanese innovators are going to need a truly breakthrough commercial opportunity. This means not just a “one- and-done” mission to the moon, but a series of repetitive missions that can be performed over and over again. Maybe it’s a big idea — a new mineral resources or a new clean energy system – or maybe it’s a smaller idea that can be executed over and over again. That’s why, in many ways, space tourism makes so much sense as an initial first step — who wouldn’t pay to see a “full Earth- rise” from lunar orbit?    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And there could be a twist on that space tourism concept that involves people back on Earth. The sole Japanese entry in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition — Team HAKUTO — is building a series of lunar rovers for traversing the moon’s surface in coordination with fellow XPRIZE competitor Astrobotic, which suggested a “NASCAR on the Moon” scenario as one way to build excitement about getting back to the moon. Imagine unleashing a whole host of these lunar rovers on the surface of the moon, and enabling a live video stream where fans from different nations could cheer on their favorite bots as they hop, crawl or race over the surface of the moon towards a finish line.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A lot has changed in the 40-plus years since the United States last landed a man on the moon. Landing on the moon used to be about superpower prestige, now it’s increasingly about the commercial opportunities. Rapidly growing nations in search of resources and opportunities are teaming up with corporations with the technology know-how to turn science fiction into science fact. With Japan added to the mix, this only heightens the possibility that simply getting to the moon will not become the end-all and be-all of space innovation, but rather the launching point for a new era in space innovation.

China sets its space exploration sights on the dark side of the moon

China’s increasingly ambitious space program plans to attempt the first landing of a lunar probe on the moon’s far side, a leading engineer said. The Chang’e 4 mission is planned for sometime before 2020, Zou Yongliao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ moon exploration department told state broadcaster CCTV in an interview broadcast last week. Zou said the mission’s objective would be to study geological conditions on the moon’s far side, also known as the dark side. That could eventually lead to the placement of a radio telescope for use by astronomers, something that would help “fill a void” in man’s knowledge of the universe, Zou said. Radio transmissions from Earth are unable to reach the moon’s far side, making it an excellent location for sensitive instruments. China’s next lunar mission — an attempt to land an unmanned spaceship on the moon before returning to Earth with samples — is scheduled for 2017. If successful, that would make China only the third country after the United States and Russia to have carried out such a maneuver. China’s lunar exploration program, named Chang’e after a mythical goddess, has already launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes, and in 2013 it landed a craft on the moon with a rover on board. China has also hinted at a possible crewed mission to the moon. China sent its first astronaut into space in 2003 and has powered ahead with a series of methodically timed steps, including the deployment of an experimental space station.

One small step for man, one giant step for the commercialization of the moon

Maybe plans for the commercial exploration of the moon aren’t so far-fetched after all. The FAA, in a carefully worded policy statement, has essentially outlined a scenario by which a U.S.-based company – Bigelow Aerospace – could stake future claims to lunar property. That could be huge.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For nearly 50 years, ever since the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty (signed by over 100 nations, including the United States), there has been unanimous international agreement that no nation could stake a sovereign claim to the moon for any reason. Moreover, every nation’s government has also been responsible for any “non-governmental entities” (i.e. corporations or citizens) that wanted to do so. And, as if that weren’t clear enough, the so- called “Moon Treaty” of 1979 (signed by nine nations, but not the United States) clearly states that private ownership of the moon is forbidden.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But fast-forward 50 years, and we’re suddenly having a serious discussion about returning to the moon. Eighteen entrants are still alive in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, which will award a $20 million grand prize to any team that develops a robotic device capable of landing on the moon, crawling 500 meters on, above or below the moon’s surface and sending back HDTV “mooncasts” for people on Earth to watch. If all goes according to plan, we could even see a winning Google Lunar X Prize mission to the moon before the Dec. 31, 2016 deadline.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It’s not just U.S. innovators who are getting involved – competitors from Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, China, Romania and Russia are also coming up with their own plans for moon missions. In short, we’re coming up against an international space law scenario that everyone’s been dreading: “A private launch system based on the Isle of Man, launching somebody into orbit who would then be transferred to L1 on a tug that was run out of Dubai, and then to a lander operated by somebody in Australia.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico To make sure that the United States gets first dibs on whatever’s out there – maybe helium-3 or valuable rare earth elements – there’s been a lot of discussion already about how to create the right legal framework to get around that pesky 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty. The best option for now is the claim that a “loophole” exists whereby sovereign ownership rights to the moon might be banned, but private ownership rights are not banned. (Remember, we never signed the 1979 Moon Treaty. Ha! Instant loophole.) According to one piece of proposed legislation known as the Space Settlement Prize Act, the first private venture to establish a moon base would be able to claim up to 600,000 square miles of the moon’s surface.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Other arguments have made the case that the commercial exploration of the moon should follow the logic of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which can be basically described as “finder’s keepers” when it comes to activities such as mineral extraction. And, last but not least, there’s the “Well, China is going to do it anyway, so we should do it first” argument for selectively opting out of the parts of the UN Outer Space Treaty that would block U.S. commercial enterprises from freely commercializing the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So that’s why the FAA ruling on the moon is so clever – it bends the ball around the 1967 Outer Space Treaty by clearly stating that the U.S. government must still approve whatever a company brings to the moon and whatever it does on the moon. It pays homage to the 1979 “Moon Treaty” by stating that the ruling does not imply “ownership of the moon.” It dives into the Law of the Sea Treaty by establishing a provision for mining and exploration rights, provided some base of operation has already been established on the moon’s surface. And it keeps America’s legal options open to take on China at a later date by suggesting that the “national regulatory framework is ill-equipped to enable the U.S. government to fulfill its obligations” under the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So what exactly did the FAA give Bigelow? A “landing spot” on the moon? The right to set up an inflatable habitat on the moon? Pre-approval for a future moon payload? If you’re not a space law expert, it’s hard to tell. Maybe Robert Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, put it best when he told Reuters: “It just means that somebody else isn’t licensed to land on top of you or land on top of where exploration and prospecting activities are going on, which may be quite a distance from the lunar station.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So here’s the deal: Companies are going to the moon, and they don’t want to come back empty-handed. They are not getting much money from the government, so they need to make every moon visit commercially viable. The easiest way to do that is by making some aspect of moon exploration relatively routine, while letting NASA figure out all the hard stuff – such as how to get to Mars. For example, Astrobotic envisions ferrying “moon mail” and other payloads back and forth from the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But that’s just scratching the surface of the moon. What about mining and exploration? That’s could be one big reason why the Chinese are so intent on getting back to the moon. And that could be the real reason for Bigelow Aerospace to get the FAA to make the ruling. Imagine setting up a vast number of Bigelow’s inflatable habitats on the moon’s surface and getting access to all the surrounding mineral, mining and exploration rights. The company might not “own” a crater or an acre of moon real estate, but it would hold the rights to any helium-3 found.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Right now, the FAA is the only U.S. regulatory body that can regulate moon exploration, by virtue of its ability to license commercial space transportation. In addition, the U.S. State Department would theoretically be in charge of making sure other countries honor any contracts that U.S. companies sign for making deliveries to the moon. Other than that, it’s the “Wild West.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This might be the rare case where more regulation actually speeds up innovation. Regulation, it turns out, might become the key to making the risk-reward payoff more attractive to private companies and encourage commercial development of the moon. The problem is, the FAA might not act fast enough. Remember – the FAA is also the body that regulates drones, and that process has been slow and grinding. What’s to think that the FAA will be any more speedy with a whole new generation of hoppers, landers and orbital craft? Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves, taking about moon property rights before we’ve even figured out how to get back to the moon. Maybe the FAA has overstepped its authority. But it’s important to be talking about these issues now, before some company or nation takes over a big chunk of moon real estate and provokes an international legal war over lunar property rights.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

China carries out the first soft landing on the moon in 37 years

BEIJING — China completed the first soft landing on the moon’s surface in 37 years Saturday, becoming only the third country to pull off the feat. State television showed scientists in white and pale-blue coats applauding, shaking hands and congratulating each other after the craft, Chang’e 3, landed safely at 9:12 p.m. local time. It also showed photographs of the moon’s surface beamed back from the craft. The landing marked a significant advance in China’s space program and a step toward its ambitions of one day following the United States in mounting a manned lunar mission. On Sunday, a six-wheeled rover named Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, is scheduled to emerge from the landing vehicle and begin a three-month-long mission to explore the moon’s surface. The moon lander, which weighs more than a ton, landed in the right eye of the lunar feature dubbed the Man in the Moon, in a large and relatively flat volcanic crater known as the Sinus Iridum, or Bay of Rainbows. Its rockets shut off when it was about four yards above the surface, and the craft fell the remaining distance. The landing craft, which is designed to remain in place and operate for a year, carries a telescope that will survey space from the moon’s surface and an ultraviolet camera that will observe the Earth and the plasmasphere surrounding it. The rover, which will roam around for three months, will not only analyze the topsoil in a previously unexplored region of the moon but also will collect through its radar system information about the lunar surface to a depth of 100 yards. Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said the radar system, in particular, would yield useful data. “China has said that to be a global power, you do have to contribute to the global pool of scientific knowledge,” he said. “The moon, for all that it is our closest celestial neighbor, is rather unexplored. . . . China is, in fact, contributing to the pool of lunar knowledge.” The rover will be powered by solar panels during the lunar day, and atomic energy storage batteries will keep it warm and prevent its electronic systems from freezing during the lunar night, which lasts the equivalent of two weeks on Earth and can see temperatures as low as 180 degrees below zero Celsius, the equivalent of 292 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. “Compared to the last century’s space race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, mankind’s current return to the moon is more based on curiosity and exploration of the unknown universe,” Sun Huixian, the project’s deputy chief engineer told the official Xinhua News Agency. “China’s lunar program is an important component of mankind’s activities to explore the peaceful use of space.” The lander and the rover are named for a Chinese myth about a woman named Chang’e who swallowed magic pills and took her pet rabbit, Yutu, to the moon, where she has lived as a goddess ever since. “Though people have discovered that the moon is bleached and desolate, it doesn’t change its splendid role in Chinese traditional culture,” Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Beijing’s Peking University, told Xinhua. China hopes to mount another mission to the moon in 2017 that would collect rock and soil samples. It also hopes to launch a space station by about 2023 and eventually, perhaps, establish lunar bases and send missions into deep space. Its space program has the advantage of consistent funding and top-level political support, and the successful moon landing will ensure that continues, Cheng said. “This was a big step,” said Joan Johnson-Freese of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “It makes [a manned mission] far more feasible.” China’s space program has established itself as a significant player globally, Johnson-Freese said. “It wants to work with developed countries to show it is a major space nation,” she said, adding that China’s program has also encouraged other countries, such as India, to invest more in space exploration to show they are not falling behind in the technological race. The program is a source of deep national pride and was widely celebrated Saturday by users of the weibo microblogging sites. “At this moment my eyes are full of tears, I’m proud of my motherland, I’m proud that I’m Chinese,” wrote Huanranbingshi2000. MissK-Xiaoqiu posted: “China is mighty! It’s so thrilling.” But a minority of users appeared less impressed. “So . . . the poor are still suffering from hunger, corrupt officials are still corrupt,” one wrote. “A lot of countries can’t land on the moon, but they can make houses affordable, tuition fees affordable, medical care affordable. I think that is a better reason to be proud,” wrote another. Chinese media reported this month that more than 160,000 people were temporarily evacuated from their homes after the launch of the rocket carrying the moon lander dumped debris on two farm buildings. The last soft landing on the moon was by the unmanned Soviet Luna 24 probe, which collected soil samples in 1976.

America and China should team up on deep space exploration

NASA has been working to send a crew to Mars but faces significant challenges, according to the Nov. 24 Fed Page article “A flight to Mars poses risks that NASA can’t handle right now, report says .” As a volunteer docent, I recently met a group of Chinese scientists visiting the National Air and Space Museum. I asked them their thoughts on the future of their country’s advances in space. They all mentioned their wishes to work cooperatively with the United States in space exploration. They also said that the more the United States and China cooperate in space, the less likely they will be to see military confrontations. This echoes what Sen. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.), then a representative, said in 2006: “I think the manned space program has a potential all out of proportion to its size and cost for improving the diplomatic, political and military relations between the United States and China.” U.S. policymakers should investigate avenues for cooperation with China’s civilian space program on deep-space exploration. The script for deep-space exploration is constantly evolving, and the United States could influence its direction if it engages other nations. ****Kent Wang** , Potomac Falls**

China launches ‘Jade Rabbit’ rover to moon, precursor to manned mission

BEIJING — China took a significant step toward eventually landing a person on the moon with Monday’s successful launch of a rocket carrying its first moon rover, the “Jade Rabbit.” The rocket blasted off from southwestern China at 1:30 a.m. Monday, a day after India’s maiden Mars mission left Earth’s orbit on its journey to the Red Planet, in what some observers characterize as Asia’s new space race. China’s rocket is expected to deposit the rover in the right eye of the “Man in the Moon” in mid-December, targeting a large volcanic crater known as the Sinus Iridum or the Bay of Rainbows, thought to be relatively free of large rocks. If the mission succeeds, China will become the third country to achieve a soft landing on the moon, after the United States and Russia. The last soft landing on the moon was the unmanned Soviet Luna 24 rover, which collected soil samples in 1976. “We will strive for our space dream as part of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation,” said Zhang Zhenshong, director of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Zhang was echoing President Xi Jinping, who has made the “Chinese dream” one of his key motifs. The rover, called “Yutu” in Chinese, is named after a Chinese myth about a woman named Chang’e who swallowed magic pills and took her pet rabbit to the moon, where she has been living as a goddess ever since. The rover will set up a telescope on the moon for the first time, survey its geological structure and look for natural resources through a radar, Xinhua reported. China aims to follow the United States by landing a man on the moon — though it has yet to set a target date for that mission — and to continue toward Mars. “China’s space exploration will not stop at the moon,” Sun Huixian, a senior engineer in the space program, told Xinhua. “Our target is deep space.” India, Japan and Russia also are giving serious thought to manned missions to the moon in the 2020s. Chinese scientists and experts frame the space program partially in terms of their nation’s constant quest for energy and raw materials, talking about helium-3 and solar power as potential energy sources on the moon, as well as its reserves of titanium, rare earths, uranium and thorite. “Now nobody is exploiting the resources because the economic costs are too high,” Ouyang Ziyuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told Xinhua. “This is a possibility in the future, and humans should know what is there on the moon.” Chinese officials denied that they were in competition with India or other nations and have offered to cooperate with other countries. Since 2011, the U.S. Congress has banned NASA from using federal funds to cooperate with China or Chinese companies. Some U.S. scientists say the Chinese mission is not likely to add much to what is already known about the moon. In a recent article in Aerospace America magazine, unidentified U.S. scientists said the Chinese rover design was similar to NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover and that, apart from the Chinese radar system, many instruments were similar to those previously carried by U.S. and Russian space missions. However, the mission does represent a breakthrough in China’s space program, and it shows that the country is making progress toward landing a person on the moon. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, has urged NASA to cooperate with China, perhaps collaborating to land a person on Mars. “The Chang’e 3 details tell me that the U.S. now absolutely must start communicating with the Chinese about lunar cooperation,” he told Aerospace America. Li Qi contributed to this report.

Russian official wants to investigate whether U.S. moon landings actually happened

The increasingly tense relationship between the United States and Russia might be about to face a new challenge: a Russian investigation into American moon landings. In an op-ed published by Russian newspaper Izvestia on Tuesday, Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for the government's official Investigative Committee, argued that such an investigation could reveal new insights into the historical space journeys.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico According to a translation by the Moscow Times, Markin would support an inquiry into the disappearance of original footage from the first moon landing in 1969 and the whereabouts of lunar rock, which was brought back to earth during several missions.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico "We are not contending that they did not fly [to the moon], and simply made a film about it. But all of these scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts are part of the legacy of humanity, and their disappearance without a trace is our common loss. An investigation will reveal what happened," Markin wrote, according to the Moscow Times translation. The op-ed is unlikely to raise worries among NASA officials. In 2009, NASA itself admitted that it had erased the original video recordings of the first moon landing among 200,000 other tapes in order to save money, according to Reuters. However, NASA has since restored copies of the landing, using recordings from other sources such as CBS News. The organization says that due to restoration efforts, the recordings' quality is superior to the original one that has gone missing.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico NASA did also emphasize the uniqueness of lunar soil and rock in the past. "They differ from Earth rocks in many respects," David McKay, chief scientist for planetary science and exploration at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where most of the material is stored, was quoted as saying by NASA's Web site in 2001.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico So, why is Investigative Committee member Markin speculating about conspiracy theories surrounding U.S. moon landings that happened decades ago? In his op-ed, the Russian official also emphasized that "U.S. authorities had crossed a line by launching a large-scale corruption probe targeting nine FIFA officials," according to the Moscow Times. On June 2, FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced that he would eventually step down amid an ongoing investigation into widespread corruption at the organization. "U.S. prosecutors have declared themselves the supreme arbiters of international football affairs," Markin complained in his op-ed. The official went on to argue that U.S. investigators had confused political bargaining with corruption. He specifically referred to media speculation that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder authorized military arms shipments to Saudi Arabia to help Germany win the 2006 World Cup bid.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Buzz Aldrin really wants to send people to Mars — and leave them there for a long time

Buzz Aldrin has been on a mission to the moon. But these days, the legendary Apollo 11 astronaut is fixated on one thing: Getting humankind to Mars — and keeping them there for a long time. Aldrin has some ideas about what a human mission to the red planet should look like. And unlike his triumphant return to Earth, Aldrin wants the Mars explorers of tomorrow to stay there. Potentially, for a very long time. “It [will] cost the world — and the U.S. — billions and billions of dollars to put these people there, and you’re going to bring them back?” Aldrin said during a panel discussion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week. “What are you going to do when you bring them back here that can possibly compare [to] the value that they would be if they stayed there and Mars wasn’t empty? And then, they helped to work with the next group and it builds up a cadre of people. When we’ve got 100 — or whatever it is — then we start bringing people back.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico This isn’t the first time Aldrin has posited the idea of having semi-permanent Mars colonizers. Earlier this year, in an interview with The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach, Aldrin worried that the high cost of a Mars mission might deter public funders from sending enough people to Mars to make a difference scientifically.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “If we go and come back, and go and come back, I’m sure Congress will say, ‘Oh, we know how to do that, let’s spend the money somewhere else.’ And everything we will have invested will be sloughed aside,” he said. Perhaps he was speaking from experience: Since the last manned Apollo mission to the moon, nearly 42 years ago, NASA hasn’t sent any astronauts back. In 2005, NASA announced “a new era in space exploration” with the Constellation program. The proposal sought to expand the human presence deeper into space, first by going back to the moon by 2020 and eventually landing on Mars.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It’s no surprise that in the subsequent years, the program’s goal became increasingly distilled down to a simple objective: do more for less money than the last time. “We want to do it cheaper, and we want to do it safer,” Jeff Hanley, NASA’s Constellation program manager told SPACE.com in 2009. “That’s a pretty tough prescription for NASA to meet.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico With the U.S. economy in the gutter, the program was eliminated the following year:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Private donors have since demonstrated that they’re serious about commercial space flight. But Aldrin said recently that he believes space tourism conflicts with his firm belief in the need for a semi-permanent human settlement on Mars. And it isn’t just about the money; Aldrin is similarly concerned about the need to produce long-term scientific research in the most cost-effective way. “I have considered whether a landing on Mars could be done by the private sector,” Aldrin commented in a Reddit AMA in July. “It conflicts with my very strong idea, concept, conviction, that the first human beings to land on Mars should not come back to Earth. They should be the beginning of a build-up of a colony/settlement, I call it a ‘permanence.'”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But while a return ticket from Mars may be expensive, so is figuring out how to keep humans alive in its inhospitable atmosphere for long periods of time. Earlier this year, MIT researchers evaluated a proposal for long-term Mars colonization — not unlike what Aldrin is proposing — called the Mars One plan. While they didn’t find it to be impossible, they concluded that the task would be very difficult and might require technology that doesn’t yet exist.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For example, sustaining life long-term on Mars would require having enough food for the duration of the mission — which could potentially be indefinite. Carrying food up with passengers could be prohibitively burdensome and expensive. But growing food could also present its own problems, the researchers found:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And that’s just one of the potential complications. NASA scientists and other sharp minds are undoubtedly thinking hard about the answers to these very questions — not just for Mars space travel, but for virtually all future extraterrestrial endeavors. Reducing the energy requirements for space travel and increasing rocket capabilities will be essential to making space travel worth the investment. Earlier this week, author Kate Greene wrote about her experience as a participant in the University of Hawaii’s HI-SEAS Mars mission simulation. Her take-away, controversial though it may be, was that women would be best suited for Mars missions precisely because they generally weigh less, eat less, and use less energy. It’s a difference that Greene suggest could make an enormous difference, at least in the strictly mathematical feasibility of such a mission:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico That seems to be a compelling rationale. Though there are clearly other important reasons to desire more gender diversity — namely team dynamics, skills and fairness. And there are also other reasons why indefinite trips to Mars might make recruiting any candidates a tad bit more difficult. How many would sign up for potentially never seeing their loved ones and friends on Earth again? “At the very least, I think that people need a fighting chance to return,” noted Vance Brand, a former NASA astronaut and Aldrin’s fellow panelist at MIT.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Let’s go back to the moon. No, Mars. No, the moon. The debate continues.

To the moon again? Or Mars? The questions have hung over NASA for years, and emerged again at a Senate committee hearing Tuesday. Under President George W. Bush, the target was the moon. Under Obama, who said “we’ve been there before,” Mars became the mission. But now as his term nears its end, there is some increasingly vocal criticism of that decision, saying there isn’t the funding or political will to get to Mars. Focusing on Mars is a “flawed policy direction,” Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University testified on Tuesday. The shift in goals “blindsided” the international space community, he said. The moon “is the next logical target for all of our potential international partners.” Russia has endorsed sending astronauts there, he said. China sent an unmanned rover to the moon, and unveiled designs for a new heavy rocket for deep space exploration. It even has plans to build its own space station. “Growing space powers such as the Republic of Korea and India have their own unmanned lunar ambitions,” Pace said, while adding that the private sector has also made huge advancements. To regain its prominence in space, the United States should “lead a multinational program to explore the moon," Pace said. If it doesn’t, he could imagine a “post-American space world, with a full range of manned and unmanned space activities, but without American leadership or even, in many cases, an American presence.” Testifying before the same committee, Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 pilot who was the second man to walk on the moon, said NASA is right to focus on going beyond the moon. "American leadership is more than simply getting one step ahead of our global competitors," he said. "American leadership is inspiring the world by consistently doing what no other nation is capable of doing." Aldrin said he's working on a plan to get to Mars, and the next president should press ahead with the mission. “I believe that early in the next administration, the nation must commit to developing a permanent presence on Mars,” he said. With much fanfare, NASA has trumpeted its “Journey to Mars” campaign. And it has highlighted the unmanned test flight of the Orion capsule last year as evidence of its progress toward reaching the Red Planet. It is also developing a new heavy rocket, known as the Space Launch System, designed to go to Mars and deep space.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But critics have maintained that without the funding to support such an endeavor, the attempt is a little more than a public relations stunt. And while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other members the committee on Tuesday said they were committed to the new rocket, others have been less supportive. “We made a wrong decision when we went down this road,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said at a hearing late last year.

An exclusive look at Jeff Bezos’s plan to set up Amazon-like delivery for ‘future human settlement’ of the moon

More than four decades after the last man walked on the lunar surface, several upstart space entrepreneurs are looking to capitalize on NASA's renewed interest in returning to the moon, offering a variety of proposals with the ultimate goal of establishing a lasting human presence there. The commercial sector's interest comes as many anticipate support from the Trump administration, which is eager for a first-term triumph to rally the nation the way the Apollo flights did in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The latest to offer a proposal is Jeffrey P. Bezos, whose space company Blue Origin has been circulating a seven-page white paper to NASA leadership and President Trump's transition team about the company's interest in developing a lunar spacecraft with a lander that would touch down near a crater at the south pole where there is water and nearly continuous sunlight for solar energy. The memo urges the space agency to back an Amazon-like shipment service for the moon that would deliver gear for experiments, cargo and habitats by mid-2020, helping to enable “future human settlement” of the moon. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, owns The Washington Post.) “It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay,” Bezos said in response to emailed questions from The Post. “A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this.” The Post obtained a copy of the white paper, marked “proprietary and confidential,” and the company then confirmed its authenticity and agreed to answer questions about it. Bezos’s proposal comes as SpaceX founder Elon Musk made a stunning announcement this week that his company planned to fly two unnamed, private citizens on a tourist trip around the moon by next year — an ambitious timeline that, if met, could beat a similar mission by NASA.  Anticipating that the Trump administration is focusing on the moon, the space agency recently announced it is considering adding astronauts to the first flight of its Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule. That flight, originally scheduled to fly without humans in 2018, would also circle the moon. But as the space agency seeks to move faster under the Trump administration, it is now studying the feasibility of adding crew for a mission that would then occur by 2019.  Obama killed plans for a lunar mission, saying in 2010 that “we’ve been there before.” But the administration’s Mars plan was still far from actually delivering humans there, and critics grew frustrated that NASA has not been able to fly humans out of low Earth orbit since the 1970s. A shot around the moon, however, could be feasible, even within a few years. Blue Origin’s proposal, dated Jan. 4, doesn’t involve flying humans, but rather is focused on a series of cargo missions. Those could deliver the equipment necessary to help establish a human colony on the moon — unlike the Apollo missions, in which the astronauts left “flags and footprints” and then came home. NASA already has shown a willingness to work closely with the commercial sector, hiring companies to fly supplies and eventually astronauts to the International Space Station. It is providing technical expertise, but no funding, to SpaceX’s plan to fly an uncrewed spacecraft to Mars by 2020. The prospect of a lunar mission has several companies lining up to provide not just transportation, but also habitats, science experiments and even the ability to mine the moon for resources. The United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has also been working on plans to create a transportation network to the area around the moon, known as cislunar space. “I’m excited by the possibilities,” said Tory Bruno, the alliance's chief executive. “This administration, near as we can tell, feels a sense of urgency to go out and make things happen, and to have high-profile demonstrations that are along the road map to accomplish these broad goals. … There is an opportunity to begin building that infrastructure right now — within the next four years.” Robert Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, a maker of inflatable space habitats, said his company could create a depot that could orbit the moon by 2020, housing supplies and medial facilities, as well as humans. A smaller version of the possible habitats, known as the BEAM, is docked to the International Space Station, where astronauts have been testing it. In an interview, Bigelow said he was glad the administration seems to be refocusing on the moon. “Mars is premature at this time. The moon is not,” he said. “We have the technology. We have the ability, and the potential for a terrific business case.” At an Aviation Week awards ceremony Thursday evening, Bezos added that the moon could help propel humans even further into space, to destinations such as Mars: "I think that if you go to the moon first, and make the moon your home, then you can get to Mars more easily." After remaining quiet and obsessively secretive for years, Blue Origin’s attempt to partner with NASA is a huge coming out of sorts for the company, which has been funded almost exclusively by Bezos. The paper urges NASA to develop a program that provides “incentives to the private sector to demonstrate a commercial lunar cargo delivery service.” Blue Origin could perform the first lunar mission as early as July 2020, Bezos wrote, but stressed that it could “only be done in partnership with NASA. Our liquid hydrogen expertise and experience with precision vertical landing offer the fastest path to a lunar lander mission. I’m excited about this and am ready to invest my own money alongside NASA to make it happen.” Last year, Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its suborbital rocket, the New Shepard, five times within less than a year, flying just past the 62-mile edge of space and then landing vertically on a landing pad at the company’s West Texas facility. That same technology could be used to land the Blue Moon vehicle on the lunar surface, the company said. Its white paper shows what looks like a modified New Shepard rocket, standing on the moon with an American flag, a NASA logo and Blue Origin’s feather symbol. The company said it plans to land its Blue Moon lunar lander at Shackleton Crater on the moon’s south pole. The site has nearly continuous sunlight to provide power through the spacecraft’s solar arrays. The company also chose to land there because of the “water ice in the perpetual shadow of the crater’s deep crevices.” Water is vital not just for human survival, but also because hydrogen and oxygen in water could be transformed into rocket fuel. The moon, then, is seen as a massive gas station in space. The Blue Moon spacecraft could carry as much as 10,000 pounds of material and fly atop several different rockets, including NASA’s Space Launch System, the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V or its own New Glenn rocket, which is under development and expected to fly by the end of the decade, the company said. “Once on the surface, the lander’s useful payload can be used to conduct science or deploy rovers,” the company said. “A robotic arm attached to the lander will deploy to examine the lunar surface with an array of instruments.” The initial landing “is envisioned as the first in a series of increasingly capable missions,” including flying samples of lunar ice back to Earth for study. The company said it could also help deliver the cargo and supplies needed for human settlements. “Blue Moon is all about cost-effective delivery of mass to the surface of the Moon,” Bezos wrote. “Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability.”

Andy Weir, author of “The Martian,” aims his pen at the moon

But he's also working on another novel, this one about a city on the Earth's moon that features a female protagonist who is something of a criminal but still lovable, according to Weir. He said he doesn't intend to bring back Mark Watney of "The Martian," essentially because the wisecracking Watney would threaten to steal the show. I asked him if he's implicitly endorsing a return by NASA and its partners to the moon -- something that has been a politically fraught question in space policy circles. His answer: Yes. Weir thinks it's a great place to test the technology for long-duration off-world missions. The moon is right next door, cosmically speaking; you've got a bailout option with the Earth just four days away. But when you fire your thrusters to go to Mars, you're not coming back for close to three years. As everyone at the H2M Summit will tell you: Mars is hard. The problem is, we've been to the moon already, a fact cited by President Obama in 2010 when he said we should go to an asteroid and forget about his predecessor's back-to-the-moon plan, called Constellation. In the overused space-policy shorthand, the moon is a red destination and an asteroid is a blue destination. NASA checked out the asteroid possibilities and winced: Such a trip, involving an asteroid in its natural orbit, would require a mission of several hundred days, as well as construction of a habitation module that could keep a crew of astronauts alive all that time while they traveled around the sun. NASA, as we've reported, went to a convoluted backup plan in which it would capture an asteroid robotically and redirect it to lunar orbit. Astronauts would then go in the new Orion capsule to visit the asteroid and bring home samples. (It's hard to find the right asteroid for such a mission, though, so NASA is now talking about breaking off a boulder from an asteroid and letting that be the redirected object.) A lot of people find this Asteroid Redirect Mission deeply unsatisfying. Some of them are determined to go to Mars, however hard such a mission might be. SpaceX, for example, and its founder Elon Musk have been clear that they are going straight to Mars with humans rather than doing a practice run anywhere near the moon. Musk and his people have said they could put a human on Mars in the 2020s, an extremely optimistic view, and it’s notable that SpaceX has a limited presence here at the conference. Maybe the H2M conference is too NASA-centric and bureaucratic for those folks. Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, was backstage this morning and shared his own thoughts. He thinks NASA's much-hyped "Journey to Mars" is "fictive" and fundamentally a rationale for a broad assortment of programs that were approved to satisfy provincial interests and don't really knit together into a coherent plan. "The real question for NASA is, do you really want to go to Mars or don't you?" Zubrin said. I asked him about SpaceX going in the 2020s. "Plausible," he replied. "Not necessarily probable. But not impossible." In the meantime, SpaceX says it will send an uncrewed Dragon spacecraft to Mars as soon as 2018. The mission will be known as Red Dragon, and NASA will provide technical support under a no-cash-exchanged Space Act Agreement. Landing anything on Mars is tough, as many countries have learned. NASA is the only space agency on Earth to have succeeded in landing a fully operational spacecraft on Mars. The Curiosity rover, the largest of those payloads, weighs only about one metric ton (at time of launch here), but the SpaceX Dragon would be at least five times heavier and would use the supersonic retro-propulsion technology that the company has used to land the first stage of its rocket boosters. This could obviously go either way. You could wind up with a new crater on Mars. Or, if it all works, you've opened the way toward the kind of large payloads necessary for a human mission to the surface. And one of these days we'll talk about a nearer-term concept: a Mars Sample Return mission. That's a longer conversation that includes a discussion about planetary protection and whether we should fear Martian microbes. Zubrin, for one, says no, because chunks of Mars reach the Earth all the time in the form of meteorites that originated as Martian rocks blasted into space by asteroid impacts. "If we could get the Red Death from Mars, it's already here," Zubrin said.

Space warfare with Russia and China? Pentagon urged to prepare for it.

Picture this: A Chinese fighter jet accidentally crashes into a Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane while attempting to buzz it over the South China Sea, killing all on board both aircraft. Fearing U.S. retaliation, China goes a relatively unexpected route: It uses surface-to-air missiles to shoot numerous U.S. satellites out of the heavens in quick succession. Very quickly, the Navy is forced to navigate the Pacific with little use of GPS and degraded communications, causing chaos and uncertainty. The Chinese strikes also have knocked out some of the Pentagon’s ability to control its arsenal of precision-guided weapons. None of this has happened. But the hypothetical scenario points out the reliance the Pentagon has on space and the military technology it keeps in it. Satellites have soared over the earth’s atmosphere for decades, providing the United States with a huge advantage militarily, even at a time when the conventional weapons U.S. rivals have are formidable. _[U.S. military wants help to launch satellite-fixing robots into space]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A new report released on Wednesday by the Center for a New American Security highlights the vulnerabilities the Pentagon has in space, and calls for a shift in strategy to safeguard it and prepare for conflict there. It’s written by senior fellow Elbridge Colby, a former member of the presidential campaign staff of Gov. W. Mitt Romney (R.-Mass.), and argues that potential adversaries like China and Russia have noticed the degree to which the United States is reliant on its “space architecture,” and begun to seek ways to threaten it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Indeed, many observers have noted that these potential opponents judge the U.S. space architecture to be the Achilles’ heel’ of U.S. military power, in light of the depth of American reliance on theses systems and the vulnerability of the U.S. military satellite architecture,” the report said. Threats to satellites include not only missiles, but also cyber and electronic attacks that could disable them. In effect, Colby argues, “space is becoming a domain like any other — air, sea, land, and electromagnetic — in which the United States will have to compete and fight the ability to access and exploit the domain rather assume safe and uncontested passage within and use of it.” The Pentagon already has begun to prepare in response. Last year, for example, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter directed the military to begin looking at reducing its reliance on GPS satellites, arguing that the Defense Department probably won’t buy them within 20 years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “Here’s a sentiment and a prediction for you: I hate GPS,” Carter said in a exchange of questions on a blog produced by the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz. “The idea that we are all hooked to a satellite — formerly bought by me to my great resentment — in a semi-synchronous orbit that that doesn’t work in certain circumstances, does not work indoors or in valleys in Afghanistan, is ridiculous.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Colby argued that regardless what steps the military takes, it is unlikely the United States will ever have unchallenged dominance in space again. Therefore, the United States needs to consider adjusting what it will do if a satellite is attacked. During the Cold War, Colby notes, there was the threat that the United States would respond to any attack in space with devastating force. He suggests adopting new norms, including that attacks in space can result in retaliation outside space, like airstrikes on ground targets. “This is crucial to the United States’ particular interests, given the greater current U.S. reliance on space and the consequent preference of its potential adversaries to confine legitimate retaliation in the face of such strikes to space itself,” he wrote. “Yet such a candidate principle stands a strong chance of being more widely accepted as a wide gamut of countries have come to rely on space and appreciate its value and connectivity to the fullest range of civil and military applications.” _[Why the Pentagon is wooing Silicon Valley — and the valley is playing hard to get]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In a phone interview, Colby said that space is a perfect example of the challenges to American military superiority. There’s no reason to think China and Russia will be restrained there, and that prompted him to raise the questions about how the Pentagon can limit future warfare involving space. “In my mind, we’re going to be picking up a lot of the thinking that kind of stopped with the end of the Cold War,” Colby said. “Some people are like, ‘Well, that’s Cold War thinking,’ and my response is that there was a lot of bad thinking in the Cold War, but there also was a lot of incredibly good and deep thinking in the sense that there was this titanic struggle between the free world and the Communist bloc, and you had some of the best minds to deeply engage with these issues.” Colby said that even if the Russians or Chinese don’t shoot down satellites, they’ll look for ways to jam them and prevent their usage. “Space is going to be a vulnerable domain, so we’re going to have to think of ways to mitigate that risk and mitigate those threats,” he said. “Fundamentally, we’re going to have to find ways to persuade or coerce our adversaries not to take full advantage of their abilities to hurt us in space.” **More on Russia and China on Checkpoint:**   Why Russia is sending airstrike information to the U.S. military headquarters    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Gotcha? Russian military base reportedly found in Ukraine by drone    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico U.S. Navy to China: We’ll sail our ships near your man-made islands whenever we want    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico U.S. Navy releases video of South China Sea aerial surveillance    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

McCain to Pentagon: Don’t let your aircraft carriers visit China

As the Pentagon considers whether to allow a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to make a historic port visit to China, the idea is drawing flak from Capitol Hill. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged the Defense Department to scuttle the proposal in a letter dated Monday to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work. Calling the Navy’s Nimitz-class carriers “one of the most sophisticated and lethal military tools in world history,” McCain said it would be a political and symbolic mistake for the Navy to accept a Chinese invitation for one of its massive flattop vessels to swing by for a visit. “Sending such a platform to China would be seen as an international display of respect to China and it’s Navy, despite Beijing’s recent record of aggressive behavior in the East and South China Seas,” McCain wrote. “I believe it would also send the wrong signal to allies and partners throughout the region, including Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, who are looking to the United States for leadership in the face of China’s continued use of coercion to pursue its territorial claims.” On Friday, Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said defense officials have decided to shelve the idea of a carrier visit to China, at least for now. “We have no plans for a carrier visit to mainland China this year,” he said. The announcement came a day after U.S. and Chinese military officials met at the Pentagon to discuss various forms of military exchanges for the remainder of the year. The Pentagon has been seeking closer military ties with China – such as more frequent military exchanges, multilateral exercises and visits by senior leaders – even as both countries have sought to project more force in Asia. Relations have gradually improved since January 2010, when Beijing suspended military visits and exchanges with Washington to protest U.S. arm sales to Taiwan. But turbulent moments have arisen, such as an increasing number of dangerous midair encounters between U.S. and Chinese aircraft. As a result, some lawmakers have questioned whether the Pentagon is too eager to become friendly with the People’s Liberation Army.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In December, Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), sent a letter to Hagel expressing “a growing concern with the overall trajectory of the military-to-military relationship” with China. He questioned whether the efforts to cultivate ties with the PLA had paid off, and requested that Hagel conduct a formal review of the Pentagon’s policy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico China’s Navy chief, Adm. Wu Shengli, suggested in July to his American counterpart, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the U.S. chief of naval operations, that he would consider sending a U.S. carrier on a port visit. The idea has been batted around since then in the halls of the Pentagon, but officials said no decision had been made. Part of the reason that China has been interested in arranging a visit is because the PLA-Navy has been trying to develop its own fleet of carriers. Its first carrier, the Liaoning, completed its first sea trials last year; Hagel toured the ship in April during an official visit to the port of Qingdao. More recently, word has leaked out that China is building a second carrier, though the PLA has been mum about the subject. The U.S. Navy has 11 carriers – nine more than any other country in the world.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

That entrepreneur who wants to mine the moon? He’s getting a lot closer!

The company’s first mission will to be send up a spacecraft no bigger than a washing machine to collect moon samples.  If it successfully completes this mission it’ll pull in another $20 million from a Google contest aimed at awarding the first company to privately fund a rover to the moon. Moon Express is the only private company to have been granted permission by the U.S. government to leave Earth and land on the moon. It could be the beginning of something out of this world. “This year is a watershed year for Moon Express and America’s commercial space industry,” Bob Richards, Moon Express’ co-founder, president and chief executive told MSN. Private companies can expect to see stiff competition from U.S., Chinese and Russian government-funded programs too. Want to go to the moon on holiday? Ever the entrepreneur, Jain and his team are promising to deliver that too by 2026, as well as the development of future space colonies.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to meet with Panetta amid health rumors

BEIJING —  Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has been promised an audience with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, U.S. defense officials said Monday, in what would be the Chinese leader’s first meeting with a foreign leader since he mysteriously vanished from view this month. U.S. defense officials said the Chinese government confirmed that Xi would meet Wednesday with Panetta in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, apparently in an emphatic bid to dispel doubts about the Chinese leader’s health and political future. Xi canceled meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other foreign dignitaries without official explanation this month, fueling rumors about his status as China’s putative leader-in-waiting. He reappeared in public briefly Saturday during a visit to a Chinese university. Speculation arose that he had been sidelined by a bad back or a bad heart at a time when China is preparing for a major once-in-a-decade leadership transition. Xi is expected to be named as China’s new president in coming weeks. Chinese authorities said Sunday that Xi would also appear at an expo attended by Southeast Asian leaders later this week. Panetta arrived in Beijing on Monday for his first visit to China since taking over as Pentagon chief in July 2011. He was originally scheduled to spend two days in the country, but U.S. defense officials announced that he would extend his visit to a third day. In addition to meeting Xi, Panetta is scheduled to visit a People’s Liberation Army naval base, give a speech to Chinese cadets and tour a submarine and frigate. His arrival in China comes at a time of heightened security tensions in the region, as well as an ongoing effort by the Obama administration to reassert its strategic interests in Asia. Earlier Monday, for example, the United States and Japan announced they will expand a shared missile defense system in East Asia by installing a new, high-powered radar in southern Japan. During a joint news conference in Tokyo, Panetta and Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto said a joint U.S.-Japanese team would begin searching immediately for a site for the new radar, which would bolster one already in place in northern Japan, on the island of Hongshu. U.S. and Japanese leaders say the missile shield is intended to defend against the threat of an attack by North Korea, which has developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons and is seeking to extend the range of its long-range missiles so they could reach U.S. territory. Although Washington and Tokyo have repeatedly denied that the missile defenses are designed to counter China, the developments have heightened suspicions in Beijing that a secondary aim of the program is to contain China’s growing military power in the region. Panetta told reporters that there was no reason for the Chinese to think the radar would target them. “It’s no secret that one of our concerns in this area is the ballistic missile threat from North Korea,” he said. “We have made these concerns very clear to the Chinese. We’ve also made clear that we’ll take steps to protect the United States and our allies from that threat.” U.S. officials said the second land-based radar in Japan would enhance their ability to detect a North Korean missile launch. The U.S. and Japanese navies operate similar radars from aboard cruisers and destroyers that patrol east Asian waters on a regular basis. “The purpose of this is to enhance our ability to defend Japan,” Panetta added, referring to the land-based radar. “It will also be effective in protecting the U.S. homeland from the North Korean ballistic missile threat.” In addition to detecting ballistic missiles, however, the radars also provide the U.S. military and its allies a highly detailed view of ship traffic in the region. That capability is particularly desired by U.S. allies in the region that are engaged in territorial disputes with China over contested islands and fishing grounds. For instance, officials in the Philippines have asked the Obama administration to consider placing a similar land-based radar on their territory to gather intelligence on maritime traffic in the South China Sea. The Philippines and several other countries in the region have been butting heads with China over control of the mineral-rich seabed and local shipping lanes, which are some of the busiest in the world. In addition to radars, the U.S. military has been expanding its use of surveillance drones in Asia across the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean, relying primarily on unarmed, high-altitude Global Hawk aircraft. Japan has expressed interest in obtaining Global Hawks or other surveillance drones. Morimoto alluded to this in a joint news conference with Panetta in Tokyo, saying the two countries are “deepening cooperation on surveillance and reconnaissance activities.” The agreement to deploy a second land-based radar in Japan was announced hours before Panetta was scheduled to arrive in Beijing. The radar deal also comes amid a worsening dispute between Japan and China over the disputed rights to a collection of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations have erupted across China in recent days to protest the Japanese government’s recent decision to purchase the islands from a private Japanese landowner. The islands are known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. The Pentagon has been seeking to improve military relations with the People’s Liberation Army. Beijing, however, has been leery of the overtures, and many PLA commanders have accused Washington of seeking to contain its growing military and economic influence in Asia and the Pacific.

China strengthens military, Pentagon report says

China is using its growing economic strength to extend its military’s influence by taking on new missions and investing in more advanced weaponry, the Pentagon said Friday. But the main focus of China’s military buildup continues to be directed toward weapons that would be used in a conflict over Taiwan, the self-governing island that China considers part of its territory. “Even as the [Chinese military] is contending with this growing array of missions, preparing for contingencies in the Taiwan Strait remains the principal focus and driver of much of China’s military investment,” the Pentagon said in its annual report to Congress on China’s military strength. The Pentagon report listed an array of weapons systems that China has been buying as part of its effort to take on new roles and missions in the world. The Chinese are developing new stealth aircraft and may have started work on their first domestically built aircraft carrier. Defense officials do not consider the Chinese carrier to be much of a threat to U.S. forces or allies because it would be exceedingly vulnerable to attack from U.S. submarines in the event of a conflict. China is also investing in longer-range cargo aircraft and logistics capabilities that will allow it to perform missions beyond its territorial boundaries. Some of these missions, such as humanitarian relief and counter-piracy operations, are seen as positives by U.S. officials. But the country is also investing in large numbers of more modern short-range ballistic missiles. And it is buying attack submarines that appear to be designed to keep back U.S. forces in the unlikely event of a conflict. The Pentagon said it believes China spent as much as $180 billion on its military buildup last year, significantly higher than the $106 billion that it said it plans to spend this year. “Estimating actual . . . military expenditures is difficult because of poor accounting transparency,” the report said. The report also said that China continues to be a major source of cyber-espionage and intrusive attacks. Citing Chinese writings, the Pentagon said that these intrusions indicate that China uses cyber-operations to collect strategic intelligence from the U.S. government and private companies. **More national security coverage:** \- U.N. nuclear chief to make unscheduled visit to Tehran \- U.S. and Afghan forces must balance suspicion and ambition \- Syrian rebels get influx of arms with U.S. help \- Read more national security news

China said it would return a seized U.S. naval drone. Trump told them to ‘keep it.’

The Chinese government said Saturday it will return a U.S. naval drone seized last week in the South China Sea, a step toward defusing maritime tensions between the two Pacific powers. President-elect Donald Trump reacted to the news by telling them he doesn’t want it back. “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!” he tweeted Saturday evening. The comment could prolong one of the most serious incidents between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in recent memory, potentially complicating ties ahead of Trump’s inauguration. The latest spike in U.S.-Chinese maritime tensions occurred Thursday, when a Chinese submarine rescue ship close to the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey vessel operating about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, took possession of the U.S. drone. The incident occurred within sight of the Bowditch, which tracks the drone as it collects unclassified data on water temperature, salinity and other factors that may affect U.S. naval operations. According to U.S. officials, the Chinese ship refused initial requests from the Bowditch to return the drone. “We have registered our objection to China’s unlawful seizure of a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle operating in international waters in the South China Sea,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. “Through direct engagement with Chinese authorities, we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will return the [drone] to the United States,” he said. China’s Ministry of Defense on Saturday said they had decided to return the drone in an “appropriate” manner, but did not specify what that meant. Yang Yujun, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, said in a statement that the Chinese took the U.S. drone “in order to prevent the device from harming the navigation safety and personnel safety of the ship.” “The U.S. military has frequently dispatched naval vessels to carry out reconnaissance and military measurements in China’s water. China resolutely opposes this and urges the U.S. side to stop such activities,” he said. The statement, which was published before Trump’s “keep it” tweet, called the U.S. response to the drone’s seizure “hype” that is “inappropriate” and “unhelpful for settling the problem.” Beijing has yet to respond to the president-elect’s latest comment. Song Zhongping, an expert on Chinese military affairs who works as a commenter for Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, said the statement was an effort to warn the United States to not deploy this type of vessel in the South China Sea, “Otherwise, we will keep on picking them up whenever we see them,” he said. Despite sharp words on both sides, official statements from Washington and Beijing suggest that the two governments are eager to avoid further intensifying tensions at a moment of deep uncertainty in U.S.-Chinese relations after Trump’s election. Even as China asserts a right to areas of the South and East China seas also claimed by some of its neighbors, it has embarked on an ambitious program of constructing artificial islands, some of which appear to be intended as military outposts. The U.S. military has conducted repeated shows of force, sailing ships or conducting surveillance flights near disputed areas, while seeking to avoid any serious military escalation with a key commercial partner. Speaking after the Pentagon announced that the drone would be returned, a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment freely, said that the Obama administration was “glad to get it back and put this behind us.” “It’s somewhat reassuring that senior leadership in Beijing agreed that this was something that should be returned, regardless of the individual actions of their people at sea,” the official said. It is not clear who authorized the seizure of the drone. The flap over the drone comes as Trump’s election generates concern among Chinese authorities, with the president-elect questioning long-standing U.S. policy on China and continuing his sharp criticism of Beijing’s trade and monetary policies. Trump angered Chinese officials when he spoke by phone with the president of Taiwan, a thriving democracy that Beijing considers a breakaway province. While it is not clear how the Trump administration will handle efforts by China to assert itself in the South China Sea, his stance toward Beijing suggests a hard line. On Saturday morning, Trump issued a tweet that said: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.” In Beijing on Sunday, the Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone, poked fun at the mixed messages coming from the United States. “Before Trump’s generous announcement that he didn’t want the drone back, the Pentagon had already announced publicly that they have asked China to return the ‘illegally seized’ [unmanned underwater vehicle] through appropriate governmental channels,” the paper wrote. “We don’t know, after seeing Trump’s new tweets, if the Pentagon should feel boggled.” Rauhala reported from Taipei and Luna Lin reported from Beijing.

Zombie Chinese lunar rover rises from the dead

The first signs of trouble with China's first lunar rover appeared just as the craft was preparing to hibernate through a two-week lunar winter in late January. On Wednesday, a Chinese state media outlet released a report saying the rover, known as Jade Rabbit or Yutu, "could not be restored to full function on Monday as expected, and netizens mourned it on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service." But like a zombie hungry for space brains, the rover appears to be rising from the dead.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "Yutu has come back to life!" spokesperson Pei Zhaoyu told a Chinese state-run news agency.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Program managers detected an abnormality with the system as it was entering a hibernation mode for the lunar night. During the extended night period, temperatures can drop to minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Miriam Kramer at Space.com. Some feared that sensitive instruments may have been damaged.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The rover isn't out of the space woods yet: While normal signal reception capabilities have reportedly been restored, the cause of the initial issues remains unclear -- as does whether they can be fixed. But Pei says Jade Rabbit "stands a chance of being saved now that it is still alive." The rover was taken into space by China's Chang'e 3 spacecraft last December -- the first object to make a soft landing on the moon since a Soviet Union mission in 1976. Chang'e hasn't encountered the same issues as Jade Rabbit and is expected to function normally on Moon for the next year.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In fact, according to CNN, a blog on China's state-run Xinhua news site in the voice of Jade Rabbit asked its devoted online audience to comfort Chang'e if the rover didn't make it through the most recent cold lunar night.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

How property rights in outer space may lead to a scramble to exploit the moon’s resources

This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation known as the SPACE Act of 2015 (The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act), which recognizes and promotes the rights of U.S. companies to engage in the exploration and extraction of space resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico That’s a huge win for private space exploration companies, especially for companies with upcoming plans to tap into the economic potential of the moon. That’s because the legislation, in its definition of “space resources,” is sufficiently broad to include resources found on the lunar surface. In short, the moon could now be in play for some of America’s most innovative space exploration companies. One of those companies is Moon Express, a privately funded commercial space company with an audacious plan to mine the surface of the moon. As Bob Richards, co-founder and CEO of Moon Express, told me, minerals and water found on the moon would be technically classified as a “space resource” according to Title IV of the SPACE Act, which defines “space resource” simply as “an abiotic resource in situ in outer space.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “The key to unlocking the economic potential of the moon is the water on the moon,” Richards said. “Water is the ‘oil of the solar system,’ and can be used to create rocket fuel that changes the economics of space resources, not just on the moon, but throughout the solar system. So our initial goal is to locate and learn how to mine and stockpile the water on the moon. We’re effectively after our first gusher.” And it’s not just Moon Express interested in finding water on the moon. Mining the moon for water has attracted the attention of Shackleton Energy Resources, which suggests that there are billions of tons of water ice on the poles of the moon that might be converted into rocket fuel. Moreover, NASA has two different mission concepts for extracting water from the lunar surface. If there’s ever going to be human lunar colony, then finding water on the moon is going to be a priority. It’s just cheaper and easier to have a source of water on the moon than it is to bring water to the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In introducing the SPACE Act legislation for a vote Monday night, House Majority Leader (R-Calif.) Kevin McCarthy invoked the inspiring examples of both Kitty Hawk and Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier and cited the extraordinary innovation already happening around commercial space exploration:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico When it comes to outer space, however, there’s the matter of a pesky little document known as the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to which the United States is a signatory. The Outer Space Treaty indirectly suggests that commercial space companies don’t own the rights to any resources they find in outer space. The treaty states that no “celestial body” is subject to “national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The SPACE Act of 2015 carefully skirts this issue by specifically making a disclaimer that the United States “does not thereby assert sovereignty or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any celestial body.” Clever, right? If there’s no U.S. sovereign claim, then the Outer Space Treaty can’t be applicable to private U.S. companies that assert a similar type of claim. When asked about a hypothetical example in which a Chinese company or even the Chinese government might contest the rights of a U.S. company to space resources, Richards suggests that the SPACE Act would provide a sufficient legal basis. “It’s hard to imagine what challenge China or any other country could mount against this U.S. legislation, which is about rights to materials obtained, not territory, and is really just codifying principles and rights already in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that have been demonstrated by multinational activities on the moon as applicable to the private sector.” Nearly 50 years ago, of course, we didn’t know anything about the economic potential of space and nobody was seriously talking about humans as an interplanetary species. Certainly, there were not any private companies angling for a piece of the action. Space exploration was solely the preserve of sovereign governments and we referred to astronauts as the “envoys of mankind.” The prevailing sentiment, as expressed in the Outer Space Treaty, was that outer space should belong to all of humanity, not just the first nation to venture into space and plant a flag on the surface of a celestial body.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What’s happening now, in essence, is a sea change in how we think about outer space. To convince private commercial space exploration companies to invest millions of dollars, there have to be economic incentives involved. In short, financial backers of these companies have to be able to realize a profit from their investments if innovation is going to happen. That’s the reality.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Richards cites the rights of fishing boats in international waters as an economic template for the SPACE Act, “The ships are owned by companies flying flags of nations under which laws they are bound: they have a right to peacefully fish in international waters that they don’t own; but they have a right of ownership of the fish once obtained.” The fishing analogy is a useful one. It suggests that we’re simply extending the same economic principles used on Earth to the moon and beyond, not creating new principles. Seafaring nations are now spacefaring nations. Moon Express even refers to the moon as “the eighth continent,” suggesting that people should think about the moon the same way they think about the other seven continents on the planet. And Planetary Resources, an asteroid mining company, refers to the “off-planet economy.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Throughout the annals of exploration, there have always been commercial incentives. Would the untapped economic potential of America have been possible without similar types of incentives? One example cited by backers of the SPACE Act is the Homestead Act of 1862, which paved the way for Americans to search for gold and timber. Governments they say, have an important role to play here by passing legislation that catalyzes, rather than stifles, growth and innovation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For supporters of the SPACE Act, the year 2017 looms large. That’s exactly 50 years since the passage of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. And it’s also the deadline for winning the $30 million Google Lunar X-PRIZE. If privately owned companies are going to be landing on the surface of the moon within the next 24 months, they are going to want assurances that their innovative efforts now are going to have an economic payoff later.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

An audacious plan to mine the surface of the moon

Sometime in late 2016, a small robotic spacecraft the size of a coffee table will attempt to soft land on the surface of the moon. If it does so successfully, the new MX-1 lunar lander spacecraft from Moon Express would not only win the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE — it would also help to usher in a new era of commercial space exploration.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Soft-landing on the moon is a feat that has only been accomplished before by three superpowers – the United States, Russia and China. The notion that a team of approximately 40 employees at a Silicon Valley start-up that was founded only in August 2010 could pull off the same feat is audacious in and of itself. Thanks to a unique public-private partnership with NASA, though, Moon Express has access to NASA engineering expertise as well as access to launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But the real audacity is what happens next – and that’s the strategy that Moon Express has for mining the surface of the moon. As Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, told me in a phone interview, thanks to initiatives such as NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper mission, “We have mapped every inch of the moon, both topographically and mineralogically.” As a result, Moon Express has already outlined four categories of resources that might be mined in the future – platinum group metals, rare earth elements, helium-3, and, yes, moon rocks.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Of these, the biggest opportunity by far is helium-3, which occurs on Earth in only minuscule amounts. On the moon, it’s a whole different story — since Helium-3 results from solar radiation, and the moon does not have an earth- like atmosphere to block this radiation, it’s actually thought to be plentiful on the surface of the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico As Jain explains, the ability to mine Helium-3 could have a tremendous future impact on both the Earth and its environment. Helium-3 is a clean, non- radioactive energy source that could potentially power nuclear fusion reactors. Theoretically, a relatively small amount could produce enough clean fuel to power entire industries, if not the entire planet. It’s for this reason that the Chinese have also announced plans to mine Helium-3 on the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Another big opportunity on the moon is water, what Jain refers to as the “oil of the space economy.” Finding water on the moon would be big — and not just for the obvious reasons. Once you have water (H2O), you also have hydrogen and oxygen, and that means you have a hydrogen fuel source for rockets and oxygen to breathe. It also makes it more likely that the moon would eventually become a way station of sorts for further interplanetary exploration, or even a giant “gas station” in outer space. In thinking about how to commercialize the moon, Moon Express uses the analogy of the moon as the “8th continent of Earth.” Once you start to think of the moon as part of the Earth’s ecosystem, rather than a standalone object in outer space, the mind-set changes.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Here’s an example of that mind-set change: What do you see when you look up at the moon at night? Most people see a barren, pockmarked surface with zero economic potential. However, Jain views the moon as an “aggregator of asteroids” – a source of rare minerals brought by interplanetary asteroids to the moon’s surface. Once we land on the moon again, it will be easier to do it over and over again. Jain uses the example of the 4-minute mile – an athletic feat that was once thought to be impossible. But once the 4-minute mile mark was broken by Roger Bannister in 1954, it only took 46 days for another runner to break that mark.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico In the same way, once we prove that a small company can get to the moon without the need for hundreds of millions of dollars in government financing, it could open the door for other companies — including other companies in the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition — also to aim for the moon. As Jain told me, “We are really at a cusp right now, space is going to become accessible for the first time. Exponential technologies are all coming together now.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico As an illustration of how the pace of technological change is democratizing the space exploration industry, Jain applies his own background as a successful serial Internet entrepreneur. He likens the task of getting to the moon and back as similar to the task of laying fiber for the Internet to get everyone connected. Using this framework, he describes Moon Express as solving the “last-mile problem” – actually landing on the surface of the moon. And it’s here that Jain again uses an Internet-era analogy to explain what could happen next. Moon Express refers to itself as the “iPhone of space,” and what Jain says this means is that the company is going to open up the whole “space app” ecosystem once it lands on the moon. Not literally, but figuratively, of course. One example might be the pharmaceutical industry, which could develop new compounds (i.e. medical “apps”) from minerals found on the moon. To make all this possible, of course, there’s got to be not just cutting-edge technology and the right partnerships, but also the right legal and regulatory framework in place to make all this possible. The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty was largely created to prevent nations and corporations from commercializing interstellar bodies in some kind of Dune-inspired spice war to monetize the solar system’s resources.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico That being said, Jain points to the recent FAA ruling on “commercial non- interference” for space exploration as a potential breakthrough for commercial mining of the moon. He notes that the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty never specifically banned commercial activities, and points to the example of the Law of the Sea as a better template for how to govern commercial activities on the moon. The FAA “commercial non-interference” rule, he says, could pave the way for companies to mark off their territory on the moon, even if they don’t actually have ownership of the lunar surface.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico However, even if the regulatory issues are addressed, there’s still extensive disagreement in the scientific community about the precise economic potential of the moon. Take helium-3, for example. There could be enough helium-3 to power the earth for 10,000 years. Or there might not be enough to ever make commercial mining profitable, even if the entire lunar surface were being mined. The same argument could be made about any of the other rare earth minerals that have been cited for reasons to mine the moon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico While early Moon Express tests have been hopeful – and the company is gearing up for another test soon from Cape Canaveral – there’s still a long way to go. A YouTube video of an MX-1 prototype lander preparing for a test in December 2014 looks more like a university science experiment than the start of a bold new era in commercial space exploration. (In the video, the MX-1 lunar module hangs tethered by a rope from a giant green crane in what looks like a giant parking lot.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For now, though, Moon Express remains one of the contenders to win the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE sometime by the end of 2016. In doing so, it could become a pioneering company in how we think about commercializing the moon. Just as there are now massive multinational corporations engaged in the extraction and delivery of Earth’s natural resources, there could one day be massive interplanetary corporations engaged in the extraction and delivery of the moon’s natural resources.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Chinese Defense Ministry: No need to steal U.S. weapons technology

BEIJING — China does not need to steal U.S. weapons technology to modernize its military because it is capable of developing the systems on its own, China’s Defense Ministry said Thursday, denying a recent report that it had hacked into designs for more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems. The Washington Post reported Tuesday on a confidential assessment prepared for the Pentagon that revealed widespread electronic intrusions by China that might have compromised U.S. defense systems. The report, produced by the U.S. Defense Science Board, catalogued intrusions into programs critical to U.S. missile defense, as well as to combat aircraft and ships. Stealing such designs, experts warned, compromises U.S. capabilities even as it helps China accelerate its military modernization at little cost. Geng Yansheng, a spokesman for the Chinese Defense Ministry, said the report “underestimates both the Pentagon’s security capabilities to protect itself and how smart Chinese people are.” China is “fully capable of constructing weapons and equipment to safeguard its security,” Geng said, according to a transcript of a monthly news briefing that is open only to China’s domestic media. As proof, he pointed to its new combat aircraft, its satellite navigation system and its new aircraft carrier. The aircraft carrier he cited, however, is also an example of China acquiring existing foreign technology — in this case, a derelict Soviet hull — and using it to jump-start its program. Last month, China’s military revealed plans to build a new generation of carriers after using the Russian carrier as a training model. The White House has said that President Obama will raise the issue of Chinese cyberattacks targeting U.S. military and business secrets at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week. After years of using circumspect language on the subject, often avoiding publicly singling out China by name, the Obama administration has recently escalated its warnings to Beijing as evidence mounts of widespread hacking originating from China.

Chinese lunar rover Jade Rabbit still alive, despite famous last words

China’s lunar rover Jade Rabbit is still alive and kicking. The plucky rover, which famously sent out a dying message in January, is severely handicapped but is still functioning, Chinese authorities said Monday.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Sent to the moon by China to study its surface and mineral resources, Jade Rabbit experienced unexpected malfunctions six weeks into its operation.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Before entering the second moon night in late January, Jade Rabbit sent out a mournful last message that it had run into some problem and that “I know I might not survive this moon night.” The rover's missives caught worldwide attention and made even more famous after a dramatic rendition of its plight by actor Patrick Stewart in a tin foil dress on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Since then, it has been unable to move farther and entered into a deep “coma” that lasted for about 50 days before waking up in mid-March. (Because the rover is solar powered, it entered a hibernation mode during the long period of lunar night when there was no sunlight.) The 140-kilogram, six-wheeled rover was designed with a life expectancy of three months. Chinese experts said Monday that the rabbit appears to have tripped over some rocks--the whole surface of the moon is like a quarry, according to the official Xinhua news agency.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday Still, Chinese authorities praised Jade Rabbit for being "much stronger than expected." "Yutu has 'over-served' its time on the moon and sent lots of data back to Earth. We hope it can continue to work miracles," Zhang Yuhua, deputy chief designer of the lunar probe system, told Xinhua.

For U.S. leaders, confronting China is a dangerous game

_Tonio Andrade, a professor of history at Emory University, is author of “The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History.”_ China is increasingly asserting itself as a great power, and nowhere is its rise more likely to lead to war than in the South China Sea. This vital seaway not only is filled with shipping lanes, but also contains rich fishing grounds and oil and gas deposits, and China claims vast swaths of it. Neighboring countries have reacted angrily to its assertions, and China has responded by ratcheting up air and naval patrols and building artificial islands with airstrips and barracks. These tensions are likely only to increase in the wake of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling Tuesday undermining China’s claims and bolstering those of the Philippines, one of the closest U.S. allies in the region. China has rejected the ruling; its state-controlled media outlets call the court a “law-abusing tribunal.” The United States, for its part, is determined to enforce the ruling and has stepped up naval patrols in the region in anticipation of China’s negative reaction. This is a dangerous game. China is more prepared for a confrontation than Western experts may expect. We are, quite literally, in perilous waters. U.S. leaders would do well to understand China’s military past, a history far more warlike and bellicose than has long been assumed. Chinese leaders have often proclaimed that their history is unusually pacific. As former Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated, “China has never waged a war of aggression to occupy an inch of land of other countries.” China’s president, Xi Jinping, himself has said that “We Chinese love peace. No matter how much stronger it may become, China will never seek hegemony or expansion.” Yet China’s history is in fact filled with warfare — some of it aggressive. As Xi himself well knows, China’s last two imperial dynasties undertook massive wars of expansion. In the early 1400s, the Ming dynasty launched huge expeditions, marching hundreds of thousands of troops into Mongolia and Vietnam, even as it sent gargantuan fleets throughout the maritime world. Starting in the early 1700s, its successor, the Qing dynasty, also sent huge pacification forces into lands claimed by other states. In both cases, military expansion made China the unquestioned hegemon of the Eastern Hemisphere. What’s intriguing is that the timing of these bouts of expansive warfare was similar: They each occurred about 40 or 50 years after the dynasty was founded, after domestic control had been consolidated. And why did the Ming and Qing dynasties engage in such expansion after achieving domestic consolidation? In a word, security. In each case, leaders justified their military action with reference to China’s historic vulnerability. Only by achieving unquestioned preeminence in its hemisphere — or, as Chinese leaders put it, in the earthly realm — could China guarantee safety and security for its people. Expansion was meant to foster peace. Today, China finds itself in a similar historical position. After a difficult 20th century, filled with foreign invasion, civil war and destabilizing leadership struggles, it is strong and stable, having enjoyed more than four decades of rapid economic growth. But much like their imperial forebears, Chinese leaders today are worried about China’s security. The greatest perceived threat is posed by the United States, whose bases in the western Pacific are seen as a direct challenge. Equally worrisome is the fact that the United States has close alliances with countries bordering the China Sea — Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines. Will China attempt to use its new military power to assert its claims in the China Sea? There is reason for hope that it won’t come to that. The United States does not represent the same sort of imminent threat that China faced in its imperial period. And so far, Xi has been careful to avoid direct confrontation. But Beijing’s policies and rhetoric also suggest that we cannot be complacent about Chinese power or China’s willingness to use it. China’s leaders certainly feel that they cannot allow the United States to thwart their ambitions in the region; indeed, they see their actions not as assertive but as defensive. Equally troubling, they have spoken so clearly and unequivocally about their claims to these waters that they may feel bound by their own words to prepare for a military response. Conflict, although unlikely, is increasingly possible. All it would take is one missed communication, one slightly misjudged fly-by. Chinese history sometimes seems to move in cycles, as successive dynasties rise, expand, flourish and die. With luck and caution, we may avoid an aggressive and expansionist cycle this time around, but Western leaders must combine respect for international legal structures with an awareness of China’s need for security within its sphere of influence. China’s leaders, for their part, must understand that their desire to expand China’s sphere of influence is best achieved peacefully. International law can work in their favor as well. War between the world’s two great powers is a terrifying prospect. Let’s hope leaders on both sides communicate clearly and act wisely. **Read more:** The Post’s View: Dangerous rocks in the South China Sea David Ignatius: The U.S. is heading toward a dangerous showdown with China Josh Rogin: The Obama administration is failing to stop China’s Pacific aggression Dennis C. Blair and Jeffrey W. Hornung: China’s self-defeating provocations in the South China Sea Joshua Kurlantzick: Let China win. It’s good for America.

NASA, heeding Trump, may add astronauts to a test flight moon mission

President Trump has indicated that he wants to make a splash in space. During his transition, he spoke with historian Douglas Brinkley about John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 vow to go to the moon before the decade was out. Now Trump and his aides may do something very similar: demand that NASA send astronauts to orbit the moon before the end of Trump's first term — a move that one Trump adviser said would be a clear signal to the Chinese that the U.S. intends to retain dominance in space. NASA already has a plan to launch its new, jumbo Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with an Orion capsule on top in late 2018, a mission known as EM-1. No one would be aboard. The capsule would orbit the moon and return to Earth, splashing down in the ocean. This is intended as the first test flight of SLS and part of the integration of the new rocket and new capsule. Significantly, the SLS and Orion are both still under construction. According to current plans, a crewed mission, EM-2, would not be launched until several years later under the NASA timeline — certainly not during Trump's current term. That crewed mission would also orbit the moon. But on Wednesday, NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, sent a letter to employees saying he'd instructed the top NASA official for human spaceflight, associate administrator William Gerstenmaier, to explore the feasibility of adding astronauts to the EM-1 flight. Lightfoot wrote: “I know the challenges associated with such a proposition, like reviewing the technical feasibility, additional resources needed, and clearly the extra work would require a different launch date. That said, I also want to hear about the opportunities it could present to accelerate the effort of the first crewed flight and what it would take to accomplish that first step of pushing humans farther into space.” This is, by NASA standards, a bombshell announcement, because major missions involving new hardware and astronauts are typically planned many years in advance. Rush jobs are not NASA's way. At the same time, NASA officials and space policy experts understand that Trump wants to do something dramatic. Scott Pace, head of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said earlier this week, “There is strong interest in finding significant near-term accomplishments that can be done in the first term.” Bob Walker, an adviser to the Trump transition team and a former congressman who chaired the House Science Committee, said Tuesday: “What I hear being discussed is the potential for sometime within the first Trump term being able to go and do an Apollo 8 mission" -- meaning a lunar orbit mission like the one performed by Apollo 8 in December 1968. “This would be another precursor to ultimately landing. And I think sometime within a second Trump term, you could think about putting a landing vehicle on the moon,” Walker said. “It's also a demonstration of our technological competence. At some point, I think the Chinese need to awaken to the fact that the U.S. does intend to maintain its pre-eminence in space. I can guarantee you that if we don’t go ahead and do a program like this, the Chinese are headed in that direction.” But Walker did not say such a mission would necessarily have to use NASA's SLS rocket and Orion capsule. Entrepreneurial space companies, including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeffrey P. Bezos's Blue Origin, are planning their own heavy-lift rockets. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Newt Gingrich, an influential adviser to Trump when it comes to space issues, is among those pushing for a more entrepreneurial space program. In an email to The Washington Post, Gingrich, who said he was on a trip to Antarctica, blasted NASA for becoming an agency that avoids risk, and said the space program should leverage the enthusiasm and money of the many billionaires interested in commercializing space. “The key is to liberate space from government monopoly and maximize the inventive entrepreneurial spirit of the Wright brothers, Edison, Ford and other classic Americans,” Gingrich wrote. “Done properly we can be on the moon in President Trump's first term and orbiting Mars by the end of his second term.” Here is the full “Agency Update” sent to NASA employees by Lightfoot:

The coming clash with China over North Korea

BEIJING If Hillary Clinton is elected, her national security team plans to urgently address the growing North Korean nuclear and missile threat. That would surely raise tensions on the Korean peninsula — and it could also lead to an early and acrimonious confrontation between a Clinton administration and the Chinese government of Xi Jinping. Xi is staunchly opposed to Clinton’s plan to drastically increase sanctions on the regime of Kim Jong Un. At the Munich Security Conference Core Group meeting here last week, Chinese officials and experts delivered a clear and unequivocal message to the visiting Westerners: China will not take any steps against Pyongyang that might increase the chance of a confrontation with the North Korean regime or encourage regime change on China’s border. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui said that although China might endorse a limited U.N. Security Council resolution in response to North Korea’s recent provocations, there’s no Chinese appetite for further pressure. The Chinese rationale is simple: Beijing values stability on the Korean peninsula more than it fears the growing prospect that North Korea will succeed in its goal of becoming a full-fledged nuclear power capable of striking the West. “China will never allow war or chaos on the peninsula, and if that occurs that will help no one,” Zhang said. “We need to bring the issue back to the track of dialogue and consultation.” In Washington, there’s bipartisan consensus that returning to the negotiating table without significantly more leverage against the Kim regime would be a futile and perhaps even dangerous misstep. At best, it would only repeat a failed pattern of bribing the North Korean government into a short-term pause in its mischief. Top Clinton foreign policy advisers have been open about their intention to apply to North Korea a version of the playbook the Obama administration used with Iran. They are promising to drastically increase sanctions on Pyongyang before sitting down at the table. They are also considering secondary sanctions on foreign firms that enable North Korea’s illicit industries, which means punishing Chinese companies keeping Kim’s nuclear and missile industries afloat. For the Chinese government, both of those ideas are seen as direct assaults on China’s primacy over an issue it considers a core interest. Rather than respond to the threat of sanctions by leaning on its client state, Beijing is more likely to buck Washington and fight back against the new policy. “If the assumption of any new American administration is that China is the one to blame and we need to put pressure on or even punish China, that would be a big mistake,” said Dong Wang, professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University. China may retaliate with punitive measures against the United States in other areas of the bilateral relationship, he said. Chinese officials at the conference warned that the proposed Clinton policy carries a risk of sparking a war on the Korean peninsula, and they expressed the suspicion that the unstated U.S. motivation was to spur regime change in Pyongyang. The Clinton team has a plan to allay Chinese fears about regime change. Her advisers intend to push for a new dialogue with Beijing to discuss what would happen if the sanctions inadvertently cause the regime to collapse or if the regime implodes on its own due to mounting internal tensions. “We are not talking about creating a regime change, but should something happen, China needs to know its interests are going to be protected,” Wendy Sherman, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs and a top Clinton campaign foreign policy adviser, said last month at the Meridian Global Leadership Summit. “The South Koreans believe in tightening the noose around North Korea. . . . We believe in that as well.” But the Chinese government has no intention of entering a dialogue with the United States about planning for the day after the Kim regime falls. For Beijing, preventing the fall of the regime is a must, and therefore coordinating plans for its collapse is off-limits. David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, said that addressing the North Korean nuclear threat will be the first serious test of the strategic relationship between the United States and China in the next administration, regardless of who wins. “China is really crucial to this and we’d like to get a paradigm shift in the thinking of the Chinese leadership,” he said. “But if they continue to refuse to move into these discussions, the temptation for the American side is just to move unilaterally.” Clinton’s advisers are threatening to do just that, but they should have no expectation that China is going to comply. In fact, the North Korea issue could mean that the first foreign crisis of a potential Clinton presidency will come not in the Middle East or with Russia, but in northeast Asia. _Read more fromJosh Rogins’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: U.S. allies are buddying up with the authoritarians in Beijing Jane Harman and James Person: The U.S. needs to negotiate with North Korea David Ignatius: North Korea is scarier than ever Mike Mullen and Sam Nunn: How to deal with North Korea The Post’s View: Obama should take North Korea’s nuclear threat more seriously

China is angry about Obama meeting the Dalai Lama. But the U.S. shouldn’t worry.

China has warned the United States that if President Obama does not scrap plans to meet exiled Tibetan leader Dalai Lama, it will "seriously damage" U.S.-China relations. The meeting would be "a gross interference" in China's internal matters, the warning said, and asked the White House to not provide him with a platform.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Should the United States worry? Probably not: This isn't the first time a sitting U.S. president would be meeting the exiled Tibetan leader. And this is certainly not the first time China has cried foul. China released a similar statement the last time Obama met with the Dalai Lama, in 2011, but it did not result in any appreciable fallout, as Beijing was keen to avoid tensions, according to Reuters.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "I think China will send a strong message of protest publicly and privately, trying to warn President Obama to not go too far, because we still have a major, new relationship to build," said Sun Zhe, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University, in an interview with Reuters.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Since 1991, the Dalai Lama has met with the U.S. presidents at least 12 times, according to the International Campaign for Tibet, including five meetings with President George W. Bush. The organization has compiled list of dates and statements from the White House on each of those meetings.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **George H. W. Bush**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Two years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, President George H.W. Bush became the first U.S. president to meet with the Dalai Lama. The White House did not allow journalists any photographs from the meeting. Since then, he has been hosted by every U.S. president. "The Dalai Lama asked to meet with the President. He’s the religious leader of the country. The President felt it was appropriate to see him," according to the White House news briefing.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Bill Clinton**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University President Bill Clinton met with the Dalai Lama on four occasions: in 1993, 1997, 1998 and 2000. Following the meeting between the two leaders in 1997, China released a statement that said: "We are strongly dissatisfied with the United States for allowing the Dalai Lama to carry out splittist activities in the United States, and with U.S. leaders for meeting with him."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **George W. Bush**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University President George W. Bush met with the Dalai Lama at least five times during his presidency. China repeatedly warned that hosting the Tibetan leader would sour Sino-U.S. relations but it stopped short of threatening concrete action. "We are furious," a Communist Party secretary for Tibet said after Bush met with the Dalai Lama in 2007. Two years ago, during an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, the exiled leader said he loved President Bush "as a human being. Not as president of America."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Barack Obama**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University A year after taking office, Obama canceled his plans to meet with the Dalai Lama, raising eyebrows in Washington, as some accused him of appeasing China. Since then, the president has met with the Dalai Lama twice, in 2010 and 2011, during which he praised the spiritual leader for his commitment to non- violence. China expressed its disappointment by releasing a statement that said: "By allowing the Dalai Lama to visit the U.S. and arranging the top leader to meet him, the United States has seriously violated basic principles of international relations and its own repeated solemn pledges, and harmed Sino-U.S. relations. China therefore expresses its strong indignation and firm opposition."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Ahead of Friday's reception, the White House has tried to play down the meeting between the two leaders, saying Obama will will meet with the Dalai Lama "in his capacity as an internationally respected religious and cultural leader."

Chinese president plans state visit to U.S.

BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to the United States this year, his first state visit since taking over the ruling Communist Party in 2012. No dates have been announced for the planned visit and both sides are discussing details of the trip, China’s ambassador to Washington told Chinese reporters. The comments by Ambassador Cui Tiankai were reported Monday in the state-run China Daily. On Friday, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said invitations this year also had been extended to the heads of U.S. allies Japan and South Korea as well as to Indonesia. The visits are a strategic attempt to increase engagement in Asia — a region where U.S. interests have been increasingly drawn into competing territorial claims and worries about China’s rising military and economic power. There is no shortage of topics to work through, including cybersecurity, North Korea, Chinese relations with U.S. allies in Asia, and human rights. The announcements come days after the unveiling of an updated national security strategy by President Obama, which touched on the complex and often thorny U.S.-China relationship. “While there will be competition, we reject the inevitability of confrontation,” the document read. Xi last visited the United States in June 2013 — a purposely informal affair that occurred in California and did not include a stop in Washington. He and Obama most recently met in November in Beijing after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. Xi’s most recent extended visit to the United States was in 2012, while he was vice president. That trip — occurring when Xi was still leader-in-waiting — was a well-staged diplomatic and public relations love offensive in many ways, in which Xi talked enthusiastically of his earlier visits to Iowa as a lowly official to study American agriculture. This time, experts say, he will be returning to Washington in a much-changed position — as someone who has consolidated power more quickly and ruthlessly than most predecessors, and as a leader who has declared grand ambitions for his country and is eagerly pushing for China to be one of the world’s dominant powers for the 21st century.

Beyond ‘Air-Sea Battle’: A military concept that challenges policymakers

_Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. James Steinberg, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, is dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University._ The new concept of American overseas military operations known as “Air-Sea Battle” has come under scrutiny and criticism. Popular with the Air Force and Navy, it has been construed as an aggressive policy, and some in the Pentagon see it as a way for those two services to grab budget share away from the Army. Across Asia, especially in China, many view it as a way for the United States to challenge a rising People’s Republic. In fact, as a military concept, Air-Sea Battle reflects some needed rethinking in response to global changes in weaponry and military strategy in the Middle East and especially East Asia. The challenge for policymakers is not to discard it and replace it with something more seemingly benign but to place it within a broader security strategy for the Asia-Pacific region that preserves stability and protects U.S. interests without becoming unduly confrontational. China’s military budget is almost $200 billion a year, according to the Defense Department, which makes it the world’s No. 2 military power. With those considerable funds, China is building and purchasing advanced submarines, more and increasingly accurate ballistic and cruise missiles, homing munitions on antiship ballistic missiles, satellites, antisatellite weapons and modern stealthy combat aircraft. American analysts often label these innovations as part of an “anti-access/area denial” strategy that could be employed against U.S. forces in the region. The Chinese would try to push U.S. forces back from areas near China or seek greater ability to dominate waters near Taiwan as well as the South China and East China seas. In response, the Air-Sea Battle concept seeks to use new technologies to counter these perceived Chinese initiatives as well as similar — if more modest — efforts by Iran to challenge U.S. capabilities in the Persian Gulf. Air-Sea Battle rightly emphasizes improved command-and-control, precision strike, advanced missile defenses, robotics, submarine operations, and the use of air and space domains. So far, it has not involved big new weapons platforms. The challenge for policymakers is that each country tends to see the other’s efforts to defend its interests as threatening or even provocative — what political scientists call the “security dilemma.” Chinese strategists are acutely aware of their country’s history of being attacked by sea, so they want to reduce their vulnerability to foreign forces. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force and Navy argue that the Air-Sea concept is not directed at China but, rather, is about preserving U.S. military access and — perhaps most important — sustaining the credibility of U.S. security commitments to allies. Because of their size and capabilities, China and the United States represent a central element in each other’s major strategic planning. Denials of this lack credibility and feed distrust — which is all the more reason policymakers must put this military doctrine into perspective and not let it become a prescription for unfettered rivalry. While U.S. defense spending and capabilities still appear astronomical to China — and U.S. alliance partners themselves formidable — officials in Beijing should keep in mind that perhaps half of U.S. defense capability is intended for other parts of the world — and that the turbulence in the broader Middle East suggests it will continue to be. The United States is no declining superpower, but the country is nonetheless war-weary and financially strapped. U.S. leaders are cutting military spending even as they speak of “rebalancing” toward Asia. Moreover, the international order that U.S. military force has upheld for decades is serving both countries’ core economic interests. For the United States, China’s rise is impressive and in some ways foreboding. But China is still a developing country: It ranks roughly in the middle of all nations in per capita gross domestic product, at less than $10,000 a year, according to the World Bank. In coming years it will also face enormous demographic, environmental, economic and governance challenges. Although its military budget is growing fast, such spending is just 2 percent of China’s GDP, or less than half of the U.S. level (more than 4 percent). The stock of modern U.S. military equipment is worth $3 trillion; despite its spending, China is at perhaps 10 percent that figure. Nor does China’s military have experience in modern combat operations. None of this attempts to justify every Chinese or American modernization. But the main challenge for those worried about the risks of rivalry and war is to place military innovation efforts in a broader political strategy that recognizes the benefits of Chinese-U.S. cooperation as well as the mutual risks if competition turns into rivalry or conflict. As we continue necessary military modernizations, enhanced dialogue with China’s military and foreign policy actors will become all the more important, as will sober crisis management when problems arise. Our current approach seems well-balanced, but the task will require active management on both sides for decades to come. Air-Sea Battle is not the problem, but neither can it be the entirety of the solution. **Read more on this issue:** Robert H. Scales: Too many wars, too few U.S. soldiers

Heading back into space

Regarding Joel Achenbach’s Aug. 18 front-page article, “NASA’s mission improbable,” and Howard Pedolaky’s Aug. 21 letter, “NASA needs direction — and a goal”: During my 65 years, I remember only three times when the United States and the world were united. The first was President John Kennedy’s funeral; the second was Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the moon; and the last was the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The United States should try to repeat the second of these by sending people to Mars, not an asteroid. This, like the lunar landing, would be a bold, exciting mission that people have dreamed about for years, one that would be worth the money. The spinoff benefits are there but, of course, unknowable now. However, the pride we would feel would be priceless. ****Brian McNamara** , Alexandria** ● Face it: The outer-space destination with the highest probability of return on investment remains the moon. Making the lunar surface routinely available for human activity, ranging from scientific research to tourism, can be accomplished in the foreseeable future. Then we can target Mars and the asteroids. Crawl, walk, run. “The moon, Mars and beyond” was and is the correct order. The asteroid redirect reeks of sophism. ****Jerry Zavage** , Laurel** The writer is a spacecraft systems engineer who works as a subcontractor on the development of NASA satellites.

The United States and China need to overcome mutual misunderstandings

_Wesley Clark is a retired Army general and former supreme allied commander of NATO. He is a fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA._ _P_ resident Obama’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping should mark the United States’ true “pivot” to Asia — and it can’t come soon enough. China is more powerful than many Americans realize, and it is on a trajectory to become even more capable. At the same time, the Chinese may underestimate or misread us. Absent deeper understandings and greater cooperation, that’s a potentially dangerous combination. I first went to China in 1983, on one of the first official U.S. military visits. In those days, China sought to use the United States as a counterbalance to the threat from the Soviet Union. Traveling to China regularly over the past decade for banking business, I have met top officials and visited enterprises. Unfailingly, I have been welcomed, treated with respect and listened to. China is a rising power, surging forward economically year after year. Its $8 trillion economy is second only to the United States’ (almost $16 trillion) — but in terms of purchasing power, the two are much closer, and China is growing almost three times faster. Its leaders seem to think their country will soon overtake the United States. They look at U.S. unemployment, slow growth and indebtedness and see a declining economic superpower. The Chinese want their due, and they are growing impatient. In Xi, who is both president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, the Chinese have a leader who seems comfortable handling the country’s political and economic development as well as its rapidly growing military capabilities. Those include stealth and drone technology; global positioning, anti-missile and anti-satellite capabilities; nuclear missiles; a growing naval capability aimed at the United States; and power-projection forces challenging its Asian neighbors. It is clear from top-level Chinese diplomatic visits to India and Pakistan this spring and China’s challenges in the South China Sea and near Japan that this generation of leaders will be more assertive. We should listen when they ask why the United States is trying to “contain” China or sends its airplanes to “provoke” Chinese radar. We should take note, too, when Chinese citizens ask why we “like” the Vietnamese and Japanese more than them. In a communist state where the media are controlled, opinions usually start at the top. These are the rumblings that presage a significant challenge. China’s leaders have a strategy, and they are moving vigorously: procuring natural resources abroad, gathering technology, developing infrastructure, managing urban growth and employment, building a university system and shifting development into China’s interior. Eventually, China will produce more for its markets, protect intellectual property and raise the value of its currency. It will encourage use of the renminbi as a global currency. Its leaders expect to resume China’s historic place at the center of world wealth, culture, technology and power. And, naturally, they are also asserting Chinese sovereignty, using historical claims, the residual antipathies of war and cultural sympathies to push outward — and gain relief from what they see as a too-confining U.S. presence. As one well-connected Chinese businessman told me: “The Vietnamese are arrogant; they are using you. We will teach them a lesson, and if you get in the way, you will be hurt.” He went on to say that China could blind our GPS and see our stealth aircraft. Was it an idle boast? An indirect “official” warning? A leak from some political-military planning scenario? We need to understand. Meanwhile, top Chinese officials don’t seem to understand the United States. They don’t travel here for leisure or business. And despite their much-discussed cyber-penetration of U.S. business, academia and government, official China listens through its own experiences and culture. Its leaders don’t hear from our leaders about sweeping strategic visions, such as their own much-publicized five-year plans; to them, U.S. political debate looks like weakness and the free-market system lacks strategic direction, with individual businesses doing almost anything to advance quarterly earnings. They don’t understand why our young people aren’t more motivated educationally. And in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, they underestimate the vast economic potential of the United States — the resources, people and incredible energy that an aroused America can bring to any challenge, particularly to our global leadership. Such misunderstandings not only hinder cooperation but also raise risks in any time of challenge. It is vital that the Obama-Xi talks include discussion of these differing perspectives and take personal measure of the other’s character, style and resolve. These talks also provide an opportunity to recognize common interests, such as asymmetrical trade, investments and exchanges. But areas of disagreement — the Middle East, North Korea, Africa — must also be discussed and markers put in place on issues such as freedom of the seas around China, cybersecurity, trade, investment, corruption and human rights. No concrete results should be anticipated, or sought, yet. But a schedule should be crafted for frequent meetings, at various levels, on military, environmental, commerce, technology, education and culture issues — and we should seek results. Treaties and written agreements matter less to the Chinese than do broad strategies and general understandings. Nevertheless, we must work to bring them toward the global architecture that the West has constructed in the course of more than half a century. Wherever possible, we should agree and publish confidence-building measures. These will be important in deepening dialogue, promoting mutual understanding and shaping how China deals with the outer world. There is no better means to resolve the myriad headline issues of the moment than longer-term strategic understandings. These could, and hopefully will, emerge from the Obama-Xi meetings. As the two greatest powers on Earth are already deeply entangled economically and developing their militaries against each other, there is no time to waste. **Read more from PostOpinions:** Fred Hiatt: Will Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese dream’ include the rule of law?

How Trump could really disrupt NASA and the space program

The Trump people are taking over NASA, and it’s hard to predict how this will play out for the agency's human spaceflight program. That’s in part because the usual rules of partisanship and ideology don’t apply in outer space. Above the stratosphere, there’s no left and right. (If anything, things are somewhat reversed, because a lot of Republicans support Big Government human spaceflight projects, as we’ll discuss in a moment.) Moreover, the president-elect hasn’t said much about space, and space wasn’t an issue in his campaign, either.  In these waning days of the Obama administration, NASA continues to brand its programs as part of a “Journey to Mars.” The label is, to some degree, public relations pure and simple. In the near term, NASA's plan is to send astronauts around the moon in a series of missions in the 2020s. Why? Because there's nowhere else to go at the moment given current funding and hardware. Trump’s people could say, hold on, let's actually land on the moon. That would require new hardware or international partners and a lot of money. Some moon advocates say there are resources there, such as ice, that could be turned into fuel for a Mars mission.  The people who want to go to Mars right away say the moon is a diversion and would result in many decades of delay. They note that the moon and Mars are completely different. Yes, they’re both round objects in outer space,  but beyond that, they’re an apple and an orange. Each presents unique challenges for descent and landing, resource utilization, communications, crew psychology and more.   The Trump folks could conceivably take the radical step of killing the SLS rocket -- the Space Launch System, a descendant of the heavy-lift rocket pushed a decade ago by the George W. Bush administration under its Constellation program. Obama officially killed Constellation, but elements survived, protected by several powerful senators. Those include the SLS and Orion, a crew capsule now in its second decade of development, with a price tag north of $10 billion. The idea is, the SLS will launch Orion into outer space, and Orion will orbit the moon, and the astronauts will return to Earth, and then they'll do that a bunch more times. It’s hard to kill big space programs that cost a lot of money. Think: stakeholders. Think: too big to fail. But there’s this other avenue of attack in space, which is to let the private companies design, build and own the hardware and then for the government to pay those companies for access to space. This is already happening with cargo going to the International Space Station, and in the next few years, U.S. astronauts will fly "commercial" into orbit. SpaceX is already building a huge rocket called the Falcon Heavy. The George W. Bush administration pushed commercial space, which helped SpaceX get going, and then Obama doubled down on it. So this is a bipartisan concept, to the extent that anything in Washington is bipartisan. The problem is that it won’t make some of the big aerospace contractors happy. And that means it won't make some powerful lawmakers happy. Follow the money, someone once said. *****  And another reflective email came from Linda Billings, a consultant to NASA's Astrobiology Program and Planetary Defense Coordination Office:

How the shutdown is hurting U.S. foreign policy

When President Obama last traveled across Southeast Asia, in a trip two years ago designed to show his commitment to entrenching U.S. influence there, his administration's "pivot to Asia" was stymied almost immediately by events in the Middle East. The Arab Spring was setting the region aflame. Obama's goals of offsetting Chinese power, rallying rising East Asian economies under American stewardship and securing a role in this increasingly important corner of the world would all have to wait.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Obama was to try again in Asia, this coming week, with a tour of four Southeast Asian countries and an appearance at a regional economic summit in Bali. But, much as in 2011, the re-pivot to Asia is being stalled before it's even really begun -- this time distracted not by problems in Middle East but by the United States' own Congress. The shutdown of the U.S. federal government, due to Congress's failure to pass a budget, forced the White House to cancel the president's trip. Obama's Asian ambitions, once more, have been set aside. U.S. foreign policy is of course larger than a week-long presidential trip, which would surely have been more symbolic than substantial. But the value, in many ways, lay precisely in the symbolism, signaling to China that it would have to accommodate a long-term U.S. presence in its neighborhood and to China's neighbors that they could count on U.S. support and leadership. This is not the first time the administration has felt compelled to pull back from its long-held hope of engaging more fully in East Asia. Obama delayed his 2010 trip to the region twice, both times over domestic issues. At some point, the delays risk sending the message that the United States is unwilling, or unable, to commit itself in Asia. Regional leaders may see more advantage in hedging instead toward China -- whose regional influence, however unpalatable for those states, they can at least count on.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The window for establishing the United States as a Pacific great power could, at some point, close, or at least narrow. As China steps up its military and economic involvement in the region, neighboring countries must weigh their response. Many are eager to resist China's encroachment, but they're not strong enough to do it individually. In 2011, Burma suddenly pulled back from Beijing after years as a client, both because it felt abused by China and because it could choose the alternative of rapprochement and economic opening with the West. Vietnam and Malaysia are currently pushing back against Chinese maritime territorial claims, but at some point China's strength may be too much for them to resist on their own. Resistance to being pulled into Beijing's expanding orbit gets much easier for East Asian countries if they believe they can gather under regional U.S. leadership, as both an organizing force and a counterbalance to China. But that requires believing that the United States will be there for the long haul, which gets tougher every time Obama's seat at a major summit or meeting goes empty or is filled by a lower-level official. The United States' absences in the region are China's opportunity. Obama was scheduled to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bali, Indonesia, next week. On Thursday, as the White House announced that he would not go, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Bali a few days ahead of time. Uncharacteristically for China's traditionally undiplomatic leader, Xi was in town early to address the Indonesian parliament -- opening his speech with a few words in the country's official language, Bahasa.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University An example of the sorts of choices Asian leaders face is playing out right now in Malaysia. Politics there is divided over the Trans Pacific Partnership, a U.S.-championed trade deal meant to encourage Asian countries to link their economies more closely with the United States'. Prime Minister Najib Razak is under pressure to abandon it; Obama's now-canceled visit to the country, and all the photo ops it would have entailed, could have strengthened Najib's position. But with Obama too busy wrestling with Congress to make it out to his part of the world -- the supposed focus of future U.S. foreign policy -- Najib is on his own.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

China is worried about the U.S. shutdown. And it should be.

The shutdown of the U.S. government, and now the imposing possibility of a U.S. default, have generated a lot of discussion about what this means for the balance of power between the United States and China. It certainly doesn't seem to bode well for American interests that we're hobbling our own economy and putting some of our foreign policy on hold as China becomes more assertive about projecting its own influence. And that's a real issue for the United States. But, on balance, the U.S. crisis is probably causing China more problems than benefits. That explains why Chinese leaders have been outspoken about urging the U.S. to fix this – and it's a reminder that the U.S.-China relationship is still as much or more about mutual interests than competing ones. It comes down to economics vs. geopolitics. First, here's the bad news for the U.S.: This helps China in geopolitical terms. President Obama had to cancel his plan to attend a geopolitically important summit in Southeast Asia this week because of the shutdown. Chinese leader Xi Jingping is now the star of the summit, which is more than just symbolic. As Columbia University Prof. and China expert Andrew Nathan put it, "It’s not about the cancellation of a particular trip." Rather, "It will be hard to sell anyone in Asia on any spin other than that this is a sign of deep structural weakness in the American system." This is a moment  when Southeast Asian nations have to decide if they want to bandwagon with the United States or inch under China's growing influence. None of these countries doubt that the U.S. is richer and more powerful than China, and will be for a long time (officials in Beijing are typically the first to acknowledge this). What they worry about is that America will lose interest in the region; the less committed Washington seems, the riskier the U.S. will look to Asian countries, and the more likely they'll be to just accept China as the new regional power, since Beijing is at least in it for the long haul. So Obama skipping the summit sends exactly the wrong message: that the U.S. is too distracted by internal issues to follow through on our commitment to Southeast Asia. We're not quite gift-wrapping the region for China, but that day is not many canceled summits away from happening. The other side of this is economics. And it's not so much good news for the U.S. as it is bad for China, in ways that likely outweigh any geopolitical benefit from the shutdown. The Chinese and American economies are really, really closely linked. We're not quite yet one another's closest trading partners – China trades a bit more with the European Union than with the U.S., and the U.S. trades a bit more with Canada than with China – but we're projected to be in the next decade. That means that any tremor in one of those two economies can have a major impact on the other, and both countries are better off if the other is economically healthy. That's why a lot of the talk during the 2012 presidential campaigns about punishing China for currency manipulation turned out to be just talk: the U.S. knew it would also be punishing itself if it did anything to hurt the Chinese economy. And for that same reason, Beijing knows it's economically better off if the U.S. economy is successful. Any slowdown is bad for China's economy; a default would be very bad.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Here's the really important part: China cares about its geopolitical standing, and would certainly like to increase its influence in Asia, but it cares about its economy a lot more. This a country that almost saw everything collapse during an economic crisis just 24 years ago that ended with troops gunning down protesters in Beijing. Since then, the country's implicit social contract has been that the Communist Party delivers breakneck economic growth in exchange for popular consent. If that growth slows too much, which it's starting to, no one is quite sure if the political system can survive. And Beijing has to keep up the growth, just as it makes a crucial and very difficult transition from being an export economy to one driven more by selling things domestically Separately, China still has an astonishing 99 million people living below the poverty line; if they had their own country it would be the 12th largest on Earth. They all have to be cared for.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Those are some huge and very immediate economic problems facing China. Anything that upsets the Chinese economy — which a major U.S. financial setback would certainly do — is going to make the country's high-stakes economic challenges even tougher. Beijing would certainly like to have a healthy economy _and_ grow its influence in southeast Asia. But if displacing American leadership in the West Pacific comes at the cost of taking a big economic hit, China would probably prefer the status quo of a geopolitically bothersome but economically healthy United States. And that might explain why you see Chinese leaders publicly urging Washington to resolve this crisis. For all the ways it could help China if the U.S. poked itself in the eye, it would likely hurt them much more.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Global attitudes reflect shifting U.S.-China power balance, survey concludes

BEIJING — People around the globe believe that China will inevitably replace the United States as the world’s leading superpower, but that doesn’t mean they like the prospect, according to a new study on global attitudes. The survey that the Pew Research Center conducted in 39 countries confirms much of the conventional wisdom in Washington about the shifting balance of power between the United States and China. Mutual tensions are rising, with Americans’ favorable opinions of China dropping from 51 percent two years ago to 37 percent now and a similar drop among Chinese — from 58 percent to 40 percent — with respect to the United States. China’s economic might is perceived as rising and the United States’ as declining, and although many countries still see the United States as the top economic power, many believe that it is only a matter of time before China supplants it. Despite the shifting attitudes, however, the United States generally enjoys a better image abroad. On the question of which country they view as a partner, more nations had a majority naming the United States rather than China. The survey on global attitudes was the largest that Pew has conducted since 2007. China was widely admired by respondents — especially in Africa and Latin America — for its scientific and technological advances, according to the survey, but Chinese ideas and popular culture were less well-received. The positive views of China in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa reflect heavy Chinese investment in those regions in recent decades. Meanwhile, several of China’s nearest neighbors, including the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, view their U.S. ties as far more important than their relationship with China — a feeling fostered by their increasingly hostile territorial disputes with China. Outright anti-China sentiment was mostly limited to respondents in Germany, Italy, Israel and Japan. Hostile attitudes were especially notable in Japan, where they have reached a new watermark after heated nationalist rhetoric in recent years in China and Japan. Only 5 percent of respondents in Japan expressed a positive view of China, and 93 percent had a negative view. Both U.S. and Chinese military capabilities worry other countries. The United States’ drone program, however, proved especially unpopular in the poll, with a majority of respondents in 31 of the 39 countries surveyed disapproving of U.S. airstrikes on extremists. According to the report, attacks by unmanned U.S. aircraft drew majority support in only three countries: Israel, Kenya and the United States. Meanwhile, President Obama remains popular in many parts of the world, especially Europe, Africa and some countries in Asia, but his overall ratings have slipped since 2009, along with confidence in him and approval of his policies, the survey found. He enjoys the least confidence among people in the Middle East, with about 30 percent or fewer in most countries in the region saying that “they trust Obama to do the right thing in global affairs.” With regard to personal freedoms and human rights, however, the United States did much better overall than China — although the survey was conducted from March to May, before recent disclosures about the scope of U.S. government surveillance, including the collection of far-reaching data on phone calls and e-mails. Notably, the only country surveyed where positive views of the U.S. government’s record on personal freedoms had declined was the United States.

U.S. is right to assail China on its sea claims

THE SOUTH CHINA sea stretches over 1.4 million square miles, rich in natural resources and bejeweled with islands. China has long regarded much of the sea as its own, claiming waters more than 1,000 miles from its shores and very close to the shores of other nations. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei make competing and overlapping claims in a tangled yet high-stakes rivalry. The territorial disputes stretch back decades, but took a new twist recently. In an Aug. 3 statement, the State Departmentcriticized China for aggressive actions to reinforce its claims. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned an American diplomat for a formal protest and announced that the United States “showed total disregard of facts, confounded right and wrong, and sent a seriously wrong message.” Why this matters is that the United States has announced a pivot toward Asia, a seminal move to counter China’s rising influence, including a rebalancing of forces over the next eight years toward a goal of 60 percent of the Navy in the Pacific, up from half at present. According to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that will include six aircraft carriers and a majority of cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines. The United States is neutral on the territorial claims in the South China Sea. But the State Department’s statement was intended to push back against China’s recent harrying of the Philippines and Vietnam over disputed fishing and oil drilling rights. China has announced that it is upgrading the administrative level of Sansha city, on one of the Paracel islands, to a prefecture and establishing a military garrison there, a further signal of its intent. Worried neighbors are welcoming more port calls from U.S. naval forces. The U.S. statement called for resolving disputes peacefully. China saw it, quite accurately, as a challenge on behalf of the weaker states in the region and insisted the United States “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” What exactly does that entail? China has a very expansive claim to the sea, based on nine dashed lines sketched in a very imprecise fashion on a map six decades ago. The claim encroaches on some of the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zones granted to other countries by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has insisted that it will work out the disputes one by one, and the United States should stay away. But the State Department’s statement accurately asserted that the United States has a “national interest” in the region: not territorial, but to protect regional stability and the huge volume of international shipping that passes through the sea. The sea is clearly a flashpoint. Everyone needs to make sure it does not become a sea of hostility. ****

China confirms work on second aircraft carrier amid naval expansion

BEIJING — China confirmed Thursday it is building a second aircraft carrier, a move that will probably raise further concerns in the West and among its neighbors over Beijing’s assertive moves in the South China Sea. The carrier will be designed in China and built in the port of Dalian, said Yang Yujun, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry. It will have a displacement of 50,000 tons — significantly less than the largest U.S. carriers — and will carry China’s J-15 fighters. Unlike China’s first carrier, it will have a ski-jump-style takeoff. “China has a long coast line and a vast maritime area under our jurisdiction. To safeguard our maritime sovereignty, interests and rights is the sacred mission of the Chinese armed forces,” Yang told reporters. China claims almost all of the South China Sea, a vast and strategically important sweep of islands and shipping lanes. These claims are a major source of tension with the United States, as well as with many Asian neighbors including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China and Japan also have sparred over the East China Sea. Yang did not release more details nor did he say when the carrier would be completed. Information about the program is closely guarded. China already has one aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. It was purchased from Ukraine in 1998 and retrofitted domestically. Plans to build a second carrier do not come as a surprise. Rumors have been swirling for more than a year, but have been quickly scrubbed by China’s censors. In February, an overzealous city government leaked news that it had been selected to supply electronic components for a new carrier, only to see the good news deleted. Photos released by IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly in October showed what some thought was an aircraft carrier under construction in Dalian, the port where the Liaoning was refitted. The Pentagon’s 2015 report on military and security issues in China predicted the country could “build multiple aircraft carriers over the next 15 years.” Building a second carrier is part of Beijing’s plan to increase its naval presence as it modernizes its military. The country’s officially disclosed military budget — still small compared with that of the United States — has grown by double digits for nearly two decades, up 10 percent this year to $141 billion. The Pentagon has long held that China is within its rights to improve its military, but there are points of friction. The U.S. military has conducted a number of freedom-of-navigation operations, as they are known, in international waters in recent months, in an effort to make sure shipping lanes remain open to traffic in areas such as the South China Sea. Adm. John Richardson, the chief of the Navy, said recently that Russia and China are world powers, and the United States must make sure it stays ahead of both with military technology. He called China more of a “quantitative threat,” a nod to its military’s growing capacity. “We’re better than them, but the pace, we need to recapture the momentum, if you will,” the admiral said, speaking to a handful of reporters in his office in December. On the Chinese, he added: “I think that, to date, they seem to be catching up pretty quickly. And so their ability to adapt new technology and invest in those sorts of things has been something that has really got a lot of people’s attention.” Liu Liu in Beijing and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.

China’s dangerous provocation demands a response from the U.S.

THE UNITED States last week stepped up its efforts to call attention to China’s massive and provocative expansion of infrastructure in a disputed portion of the South China Sea. The Navy invited CNN aboard a surveillance flight and released video the next day of what one U.S. official called an attempt “to make sovereign land out of sand castles” in the Spratly Islands. The flight by a P-8A Poseidon aircraft drew eight warnings from the Chinese navy and an angry denunciation by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which called it “very irresponsible and also very dangerous.” But the U.S. action was legal and appropriate. China is attempting to steal a march on its neighbors by rapidly constructing airstrips, ports and other infrastructure on reclaimed land in one of the most sensitive maritime areas in Asia — one with multiple overlapping sovereignty claims. While it probably cannot be stopped, the project should be fully exposed — and China’s attempts to restrict air and sea traffic near its installations decisively rejected. According to U.S. officials, China has created 2,000 acres of land since 2014 on five coral outcroppings in the Spratly chain, parts of which are also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia. The video released by the U.S. Navy shows dozens of dredging vessels engaged in land-reclamation work, as well as a radar installation and a new airstrip capable of accomodating heavy military aircraft. Other nations have reclaimed land and built installations in the Spratlys. But China’s operation stands out for its scale and speed and for the brazenness with which the regime of Xi Jinping advances questionable territorial claims while rejecting international mediation or a negotiated code of conduct. Relying on a slapdash map dating to the 1940s, which consists of nine dashes across the waters east of China, Beijing claims 80 percent of the South China Sea, which is crisscrossed by international shipping lanes. It seeks to exclude foreign ships and planes from a 200-mile zone around its claimed territory, rather than the 12 miles recognized by the United States. The communist regime has dismissed U.S. objections to the island-shaping. “Now, China has the initiative, and as long as China can finish the construction, this round of intervention by the U.S. will end up futile,” crowed the government-run Global Times, according to The Post’s Simon Denyer. Still, overflights — as well as sail-bys by warships that the Pentagon is said to be considering — can make clear that the United States rejects China’s claims. Similar tactics by the United States and Japan neutered a Chinese announcement of an air-defense identification zone in the East China Sea in 2013. A show of U.S. firmness can also help rally Asian nations that oppose China’s claims and its heavy-handed tactics but that have hesitated to unite against them. As eager as it is to establish its hegemony in the region, China also wants to avoid major conflicts with neighbors and with the United States. It has staged tactical retreats in the past when its maritime aggressiveness has encountered resistance. A regional security summit in Singapore this weekend gives the United States and China’s neighbors an opportunity to push back against the sand castles in the Spratlys. They should join in speaking up. **Read more on this topic:** Michael J. Green and Mira Rapp Hooper: Push China toward diplomacy Fareed Zakaria: Whatever happened to Obama’s pivot to Asia? Fred Hiatt: Tensions in Asia add urgency to Obama’s ‘pivot’

China worries that its moon rover is frozen

China is worried that its unmanned lunar rover known as Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, is frozen on the moon’s dark side. On December 14, Yutu became China’s first rover to land on the moon. As the first lunar landing of any kind since 1976, it was a major triumph for the Chinese. Then last week came the bad news: The rover had experienced a problem that may have prevented it from going into hibernation before entering the lunar night. During the lunar night, which lasts roughly 14 Earth days, the moon’s temperature can drop to 290 degrees below zero. If a rover isn’t prepared for that, experts say, it has little chance of recovering. The Chinese will know Thursday, when the night ends. “It looks like the Chinese engineers have lost confidence that they will be able to get it working again,” said Joan Johnson-Freese, an aerospace specialist at the U.S. Naval War College in Rhode Island. The rover, she said, was intended to operate through three lunar periods of hibernation. “Now it appears that there were mechanical difficulties before it went into this second hibernation, and if hibernation does not occur normally, the Jade Rabbit could freeze,” Johnson-Freese said. Researchers worldwide have had high expectations for Yutu. The lunar rover is equipped with technology that didn’t exist in 1976, including radar that scientists hoped would reveal what makes up the layers of minerals and gases 100 feet or more beneath the moon’s surface. ** — MCT Information Services  **

Why the U.S.-China climate agreement is a big deal

Barack Obama and Xi Jinping surprised even the closest climate watchers last night when they jointly announced new emissions-cutting goals for the United States and China. This is a serious diplomatic breakthrough after years of unsuccessful efforts to do something big and joint that goes beyond clean energy cooperation and gets to one of the most sensitive parts of climate policy. What it ultimately means for emissions, of course, will be determined over many years.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What exactly is the significance of the news? It will take time (and fleshing out of details) to fully assess the two countries’ proposals. But there are already three big takeaways that can be discerned. **China is now approaching international climate diplomacy differently from – and more constructively than – before.** The Chinese announcement promises to peak emissions “around” 2030 and to try to beat that deadline. It also articulates a goal of boosting non-fossil energy to twenty percent of Chinese fuel. People will pore over these numbers (and I’ll say something about them below). But perhaps the most striking thing about them is simply that they’re genuinely new. In 2009, when China announced a goal of cutting emissions intensity by 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, many analysts (myself included) noted that they contained no ambition to move beyond “business as usual” estimates for future Chinese emissions. Not this time around: for China to peak its emissions by 2030, it would need to depart significantly from the path that most analysts currently expect. That alone is a big deal.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The way that the Chinese goals were developed and announced, though, is as important as their substance. China has typically gone out of its way to assert its independence in anything climate-related. That approach would usually have led it to announce major goals like these in a clearly unilateral context – even if they were developed in tandem with the United States. Rolling them out together with the United States says that China is increasingly comfortable being seen to act as part of an international effort. Indeed that may be part of the point here. Xi appears at least somewhat sensitive to historical patterns of conflict between established and rising powers. Amidst broad tensions between the United States and China, climate change is increasingly an area of relatively constructive dialogue, which makes it worth highlighting. A joint announcement does exactly that. One also has to wonder what domestic dynamics are at work here. One plausible theory for why Xi made the announcement in an international context is that the transformations he seeks in order to achieve Chinese climate goals are also ones he wants to pursue for other economic, environmental, or strategic reasons anyhow (for example, reducing local air pollution). Making a firm and international commitment to this can strengthen his hand against those at home who oppose such moves. **The U.S. target looks like it’s going to be really tough to meet without new laws.** The United States promised to cut emissions 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and to try to get to a 28 percent cut. (Notice a pattern – baseline and stretch goals – between the United States and China?) If the United States hits its current target – 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 – on the head, it will need to cut emissions by 2.3-2.8 percent annually between 2020 and 2025, a much faster pace than what’s being targeted through 2020. That is a mighty demanding goal. It will be particularly challenging to meet using existing legal authority – which the administration says can be done.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico My understanding is that the numbers were arrived at through careful bottom-up analysis of the U.S. economy and of legal authorities over an extended period of time. But technically possible and politically likely are two different standards. One useful point of comparison is the Waxman-Markey legislation. That bill would have required a 30 percent emissions cut by 2025, but a large slice (perhaps more than half) of the reduction was expected to be met through international offsets. The new targets thus far exceed Waxman-Markey in domestic ambition.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico That doesn’t prove, of course, that the new targets will be tough to meet; the world has changed a lot in the last five years. So let’s drill down on some details. One thing that’s straightforward to infer from the announcement is that any effort to meet the new goals will need to lean disproportionately on measures to reduce emissions of non-CO2 gases and increase the U.S. carbon sink (the latter of which is mostly beyond the influence of policy). This is clear once one observes that a 26 percent cut in CO2 emissions in energy alone would require slashing power plant coal use by somewhere around 75 percent by 2025 (barring some sort of radical and unexpected change in the transportation sector). I would normally sound a major warning note on reliance on cutting non-CO2 gases, since it’s wrong to trade cuts in carbon dioxide for cuts in shorter-lived forcers. In this case, though, it’s probably wrong to look at this as a set of tradeoffs; instead the administration appears to be putting forward the most it thinks it can do on all fronts.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico It’s also worth observing is that achieving these goals will almost certainly require changes to the implementation of the EPA power plant regulations. This would be particularly true if the automobile fuel economy rules are relaxed when they’re reviewed in a few years. The EPA power plant rules as they’re currently proposed are already spurring plenty of pushback; pressing them further will be a tall political and technical task. In particular, it’s near-impossible to imagine achieving these goals simply with actions taken during the Obama administration. President Obama’s administration may have developed and negotiated these numbers, but his successor will determine whether they’re achieved. One last note on the U.S. numbers: The fact that they’re a stretch doesn’t mean that they’re bad. Stretch goals can motivate policymaking. And few people thought, back in 2009, that the United States could cut emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 using existing authorities, something that’s now seen to be perfectly feasible. Big numbers can, however, create big backlash, which is something to watch out for. **The potential scale of the Chinese plan, though, dwarfs all of this – as do the associated uncertainties.** The difference between a 26 and a 28 percent cut in U.S. emissions is on the order of 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. That’s smaller than the EIA’s projected annual _growth_ in Chinese energy emissions for each year between 2025 and 2030. Very loosely speaking, a mere one-year shift in the Chinese peaking year could matter at least as much to global emissions as the difference between the various U.S. targets that have now been announced.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And then there’s the matter not of _when_ Chinese emissions peak but _where_ they peak. Do they peak 25 percent above current levels? 15 percent? 10 percent? That makes an enormous difference for global emissions. I suspect that one can make some inferences from the target for zero-emissions energy that the Chinese announced; perhaps more on that in another post. At least one big hint at where Chinese leaders hope to land should come next year if they announce a carbon intensity target (something they seemed to indicate was in the works at the UN in September). One way of getting some insight might be from a recent MIT-Tsinghua study that models a scenario with Chinese peaking in 2030. It uses a $38/ton carbon tax to get there and peaks at 17 percent above current levels. It would not be a surprise if that analysis was one of many that informed Chinese decision-making.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico I wouldn’t expect much more negotiation over either U.S. or Chinese targets, even though European leaders may want to have a discussion. Over the next year, rather than focus on any haggling over emissions numbers, it will be worth watching three things. What will the remaining details of the Chinese plan look like? How will the U.S. goals be received politically – and could they spook a Congress currently considering how much to try to interfere with pending EPA regulations? And, perhaps most important, could this display of pragmatic U.S.-China diplomatic cooperation be a sign of more to come in international climate change diplomacy – which will need to go well beyond target-setting – over the coming year? _Michael A. Levi is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the co-author of _By All Means Necessary: How China's Resource Quest is Changing the World__    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _Republished with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations Web site._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Pentagon: Beijing will return naval drone seized in South China Sea

The Chinese government will return a U.S. naval drone seized last week in the South China Sea, the Pentagon said Saturday, in a move that promises to defuse heightened maritime tensions between the two Pacific powers. Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said that Beijing had agreed to transfer the “ocean glider,” a small unmanned vessel used to assess water conditions, back to the United States, but said details on how and when that would occur had not been decided. The latest spike in U.S.-Chinese maritime tensions occurred Thursday, when a Chinese submarine rescue ship close to the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey vessel operating about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, took possession of the U.S. drone. The incident occurred within sight of the Bowditch, which tracks the drone as it collects unclassified data on water temperature, salinity and other factors that may affect U.S. naval operations. According to U.S. officials, the Chinese ship refused initial requests from the Bowditch to return the drone. “We have registered our objection to China’s unlawful seizure of a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle operating in international waters in the South China Sea,” Cook said in a statement. “Through direct engagement with Chinese authorities, we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will return the [drone] to the United States,” he said. While the seizure drew criticism from some U.S. lawmakers, statements from Washington and Beijing suggest that both sides are eager to avoid further intensifying tensions at a moment of deep uncertainty in U.S.-Chinese relations after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency.  The U.S. military has conducted repeated shows of force, sailing ships or conducting surveillance flights near disputed areas, while also seeking to avoid any serious military escalation with a key commercial partner. After the Pentagon announced that the drone would be returned, a U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to comment freely, said that the Obama administration was “glad to get it back and put this behind us.” “It’s somewhat reassuring that senior leadership in Beijing agreed that this was something that should be returned, regardless of the individual actions of their people at sea,” the official said. It is not clear who authorized the seizure of the drone.   Trump angered Chinese officials when he spoke by phone with the president of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province. While it is not clear how the Trump administration will handle efforts by China to assert itself in the South China Sea, his stance toward Beijing suggests a hard line.

Pentagon: Chinese government, military behind cyberspying

Cyber-espionage targeting U.S. government and business entities appears “to be attributable to the Chinese government and military,” the Pentagon charged Monday in the U.S. government’s most explicit public accusation to date against Beijing. The 2013 “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” provides detailed allegations about a problem of rising concern to the U.S. government and American businesses. Chinese hacking capabilities are particularly worrisome because U.S. officials fear that Beijing could use them as an offensive tactic. “The access and skills required for these intrusions are similar to those necessary to conduct computer network attacks,” the report says. The Chinese government has denied orchestrating or condoning hacking operations against U.S. government and corporate networks. The Pentagon added that China is also stepping up its conventional weapons and aerospace systems, saying China is transforming an armed force that two decades ago was regarded as “a poorly equipped, ground forces-centric military.” Significantly, China rolled out last year its first aircraft carrier and invested heavily in short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. David F. Helvey, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, told reporters Monday that the U.S. government would like greater insight into China’s military policy and defense goals. “What concerns me is the extent to which China’s military modernization occurs in the absence of the kind of openness and transparency that others are certainly asking of China,” he said. The Pentagon report said one of Beijing’s most pressing defense priorities is the future status of Taiwan, the economic powerhouse island that China claims as part of its territory. The Chinese government, the report said, “is capable of increasingly sophisticated military action against Taiwan.” China has watched warily as the United States has bolstered its military presence in Asia, part of an Obama administration plan to “pivot to Asia” as it winds down the war in Afghanistan. As part of that shift, the United States hopes to build a more robust partnership with Beijing as they confront common problems, the report said. “The complexity of the security environment both in the Asia-Pacific region and globally calls for a continuous dialogue between the armed forces of the United States and China,” the report concluded.

Beijing’s breakneck defense spending poses a challenge to the U.S.

CHINA PRESENTS the rest of the world with a puzzle when it announces, each year, another big leap in defense spending. On March 5, it revealed a 12.2 percent increase over last year, to almost $132 billion, the second-largest military budget in the world after the United States (which remains far larger at $526.8 billion). The puzzle is not whether China can afford such a budget — clearly it can — but what does it need it for? What are China’s intentions and capabilities? China has often asserted that its rise is peaceful. But that is hard to square with its more aggressive approach to asserting sovereignty and control over various maritime and air zones in recent years. In November, China announced the imposition of a new “air defense identification zone” over a broad swath of the East China Sea, demanding that planes identify themselves to China and obey its orders. While the United States is neutral in the region’s territorial disputes, it has made clear that it will not abide the air defense zone and has sent military jets through it without hewing to China’s demands. But Beijing’s move raised again the uneasy prospect of a military conflict, perhaps triggered by something as simple as an overflight error. China strives to be a regional superpower, not a global one, at least for now. It has put an emphasis on developing advanced weapons systems that could deliver what the United States calls “anti-access/area denial,” meaning to deter adversaries from areas that China claims — or to expel them. Thus, China is investing in weapons such as long-range cruise missiles and an anti-ship ballistic missile designed to hit an aircraft carrier. Such investments pose asymmetric threats to the United States and its allies. Andrew S. Erickson of the Naval War College presented estimates to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in January that China could build some 1,227 of the anti-ship missiles for what it costs the United States to build a single Ford- class aircraft carrier. It might take just one missile to kill a carrier. China remains frustratingly opaque about what’s actually in the military budget. More transparency would go a long way toward easing anxiety about it. China’s defense spending is believed to be quite a bit larger than what is reflected in the official budget number. But there are also unseen restraints, including inflation and the fact that the Chinese economy appears to be slowing down. China’s defense boost comes at a time when the United States and its allies are struggling with shrinking military spending. The United States has declared a broad pivot toward Asia, and it seems a wise priority, given China’s behavior and its resources. Even with breakneck increases, China’s defense spending, at official levels, is still just 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product, far lower than that of the United States. China can probably afford to fulfill its ambitions. That is no puzzle and will be a challenge to the United States and its allies for years to come. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: China must rescind its air zone over disputed islands David Ignatius: China’s assertiveness leaves its neighbors anxious Fred Hiatt: Rocky waters between China and Japan could buffet America Robert J. Samuelson: China at a crossroads

U.S. flies two warplanes over East China Sea, ignoring new Chinese air defense zone

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it had defied Beijing by flying two warplanes over the East China Sea on a training exercise, ignoring a recent edict from China that it be informed in advance of any such flights in the region. U.S. military officials said they deployed two unarmed B-52 bombers late Monday over a small island chain that China and Japan both claim as their territory. Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a military spokesman, described the flights as “uneventful” and said they were part of a previously scheduled training mission. He said there was “no contact, no reaction from China.” Pentagon officials said the flights were intended to send a clear message to Beijing that Washington would not permit China to restrict freedom of movement in international airspace or waterways. In addition to its dispute with Japan, China is engaged in spats with other U.S. allies in Asia, fueling political tension as all sides vie for strategically important territory. On Saturday, China declared that it had imposed an “air defense identification zone” over part of the East China Sea and the uninhabited islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. The Chinese Defense Ministry warned that any noncommercial aircraft entering the zone would need to submit flight plans in advance and maintain radio contact with Chinese authorities or else face unspecified “defensive emergency measures.” Japan and the United States immediately protested the move. The Pentagon, which frequently conducts naval and air exercises in the East China Sea, said Saturday that it had no intention of bowing to China’s demands, calling them a “destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region.” Less than 48 hours later, the long-range B-52 bombers took off from a military base in Guam and spent about an hour in the disputed zone before returning to the U.S. territory in the Pacific. On Tuesday, the White House criticized China’s imposition of the air defense identification zone but urged Beijing to address territorial conflicts diplomatically instead of militarily. “We believe that inflammatory rhetoric and inflammatory policy pronouncements like those made by the Chinese over the weekend are counterproductive, and we believe that those differences of opinion can and should be resolved diplomatically,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. “It’s in the interest of all of the parties in the region to do that.” China said Wednesday morning that it had identified and observed the U.S. planes throughout their journey through the zone, as it will for all aircraft traveling through the area. “What we need to emphasize is that China will identify all activities of all aircraft in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone,” Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said in a statement. “China has the ability to take effective management and control of the relevant airspace.” Experts in Beijing expressed concern about a further escalation of tension and said military conflict was possible. “It’s a clear provocation,” said Sun Zhe, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The possibility of China challenging the U.S. air defense zone could not be ruled out in the future, he said. “This announcement and quick U.S. response have clarified the U.S.’ siding with Japan much more than the past,” said Mathieu Duchatel of the Stockholm International Peace Institute in Beijing. “So there is some degree of miscalculation” by China. Analysts in Washington said they did not expect Beijing to respond militarily but predicted that tension over the island chain would continue to be a potential flash point. “The Chinese aren’t going to back off. We’re not going to back off,” said Patrick Cronin, an Asia analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank that consults closely with the Obama administration. “So right now, the trajectory is that there’s going to be some kind of mishap in the next couple of years.” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined Wednesday to speak specifically about the flight of the B-52s but said the United States and Japan had been “closely collaborating” concerning China’s new air defense zone. Secretary of State John F. Kerry spoke by phone with Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, on Tuesday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Kerry told Kishida that China’s new edict represented a “dangerous act” taken unilaterally, the spokesman said. Separately, Japan’s two biggest commercial carriers said they would not report flight plans for planes traveling through China’s air defense zone. Those carriers, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways, had initially said they would comply with the Chinese edict, but they reversed their stance at the request of the Japanese government, Suga said. The United States has a mutual defense treaty with Japan and has pledged to aid Tokyo if a military conflict over the islands erupts. The territorial dispute has escalated since last year, when Tokyo purchased three of the islands from a private landowner. Subsequently, both countries have sent patrol ships into the contested waters to stake their ownership and spy on each other. Numerous countries, including the United States and Japan, have their own air defense identification zones. The zones are established to help nations monitor aircraft nearing their territories, but in this case the zones of Japan and China overlap. The airspace fight threatens to cloud a planned trip by Vice President Biden to Beijing next week. Biden is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in between visits to Japan and South Korea. It also could undermine long-standing efforts by the Pentagon to forge a more cooperative relationship with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which is investing heavily in naval and air forces as it seeks to extend its influence in the region. Although the two countries view each other as rivals in security matters, U.S. military officials say it is vital that communication lines remain open to avoid hostile encounters that could mushroom into something worse. Over the past two years, both sides have agreed to an unprecedented number of visits and exchanges by senior military officials, raising hopes in the Pentagon that it could at least do business with the PLA, even if they don’t always agree. In September, for instance, Gen. Mark A. Welsh III became the first chief of staff of the Air Force to visit China in 15 years. The chiefs of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps are all scheduled to go to Beijing next year. “What their motives are, ambitions are, I wouldn’t even pretend to guess those,” Welsh said of his Chinese military counterparts at a breakfast with reporters this month. “But anything that helps us communicate in a more meaningful way is good. Just to avoid the tensions that are going to occur as we, I hate to use the term ‘collide,’ but as we interact or come close to each other militarily more and more and more in that part of the world.” Simon Denyer, Li Qi, Liu Liu and Guo Chen in Beijing and Chico Harlan in Seoul contributed to this report.

No human has ever been to Mars. But NASA wants to put commercial satellites there.

Humanity's research on the red planet keeps getting ever more sophisticated. Between the little rovers we keep sending, the images that come back and the larger payloads NASA hopes to land there in the future, it'll only be a matter of time before research agencies are going to need far more communications capacity with Mars than they currently have.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday That's why NASA is investigating ways to put commercial satellites into the planet's orbit. A network of privately funded satellite relays could take advantage of next-generation, laser-based data links capable of sending information back to Earth hundreds of times faster than the typical American broadband connection. NASA already has two science satellites orbiting Mars. They'll be followed by a third satellite, arriving this fall, and a European orbiter in 2016. But NASA says it doesn't have any others planned for the foreseeable future, and with the cost of sending such equipment, it's not clear that the government can afford to do so, anyway. Hence the interest in shifting away from publicly funded equipment. "Looking ahead, we need to seriously explore the possibility of the commercialization of Mars communications services," said Lisa May, NASA's lead program executive for Mars exploration. The privatization of beyond-Earth space exploration has already begun; billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has said he intends to put astronauts on Mars by the end of the decade. Expanding the scope of SpaceX's mission to include not just launch vehicles and astronauts but actual orbiters would represent another big leap for the company — and its rivals.

As Panetta visits China, smiles and challenges

BEIJING – The United States and China have alternately embraced and poked each other in the eye during a three-day visit by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that reflects the two superpowers’ growing, and sometimes conflicting, strategic ambitions. On Wednesday, Panetta met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese vice president who is expected to lead the country for the next decade. Xi had mysteriously vanished from view for much of September and canceled a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Xi and Panetta shook hands vigorously for the cameras and proclaimed their commitment to a closer relationship between Beijing and Washington. That scripted encounter, however, followed some chillier examples of the mistrust the United States and China still harbor about each other’s intentions. On Tuesday, protesters surrounded and jostled a car carrying U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke and briefly prevented him from entering the embassy. Locke said he never felt in danger and reported that Chinese police cleared the scene quickly. U.S. officials nevertheless formally complained to China’s Foreign Ministry, urging the government “to do everything they can to protect our personnel in China,” Locke told reporters Wednesday. Public demonstrations rarely occur in China without official endorsement or backing. The protesters who accosted Locke had been raising a ruckus for days at the Japanese Embassy nearby, angry about a territorial dispute with Tokyo over some uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. During his visit to Asia, Panetta has urged both sides to resolve that conflict peacefully, reiterating that the United States does not take sides in the matter of control of the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. But he ruffled feathers in Beijing when, a day before his arrival, he announced a deal with Tokyo to install a powerful radar tracking station in southern Japan. Panetta insisted the anti-missile radar was solely intended to monitor North Korea and its growing nuclear arsenal, but suspicions persist in China that it is also a target of the radar. Panetta’s visit to China is his first since he became defense secretary in July 2011 and offers an opportunity to explain the Obama administration’s new strategic “pivot” to Asia. Chinese leaders have repeatedly asked Panetta why the Pentagon is planning to send more warships, surveillance planes and other military assets to the region. In a speech Wednesday to cadets at a People’s Liberation Army engineering academy, Panetta responded that “our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region is not an attempt to contain China.” Rather, he said, “it is about renewing and revitalizing our role in a part of the world that is rapidly becoming more critical to our economic, diplomatic and security interests.” The cadets applauded politely but also posed some tough questions. One noted that Washington routinely sells arms to Taiwan, even though U.S. officials know that such sales irritate China. “Do you think that is contradictory to what you just said?” the cadet asked, referring to Panetta’s insistence that the United States wants a closer relationship with China. U.S. officials said Panetta fielded similar questions during his meetings with military officials and with Xi, who is expected to ascend to the country’s presidency this fall. Panetta said neither Xi nor his subordinates offered any explanation for why he had disappeared from public view for two weeks, canceling meetings with Clinton and other foreign dignitaries. Xi’s absence had triggered a tsunami of gossip, including unsubstantiated rumors that he had suffered a heart attack or been targeted for assassination. Xi reappeared briefly Saturday, making an unannounced tour of a university campus. But his meeting with Panetta was the first time since Sept. 1 that he showed up for a scheduled public event with journalists present. As the cameras rolled, he energetically shook Panetta’s hand and exchanged pleasantries. The two leaders then met in private for an hour and 15 minutes, nearly 30 minutes longer than scheduled. “My impression was that he was very healthy and very engaged,” Panetta told reporters afterward. “He’s someone who speaks frankly, who speaks candidly. You don’t get the sense he’s pulling his punches or reading talking points, but that he’s speaking from the heart.” **More world news coverage:** \- Turmoil in Egypt stalls talks on U.S. aid \- Suicide blast kills 12 near Afghan capital’s international airport \- U.S. troops to cut missions with Afghan forces \- Read more headlines from around the world

State Department seeking ‘a conversation’ about China’s controversial passport map

China's new passport includes, on its eighth page, a watermark that has sparked minor diplomatic disputes with several neighboring countries. The passport displays a map of China that includes a piece of territory disputed with India, an Indian territory that China claims, an outlined demarcation of South China Sea islands claimed by several other nations, and the entirety of Taiwan. My annotation (apologies for the poor artistry) of the passport map is above. Several countries have formally protested the map; Vietnam is refusing to stamp the new passport, and India is stamping its own version of the map on Chinese passports. It might sound silly, but the issue hits on much larger and more complicated territorial disputes, which are themselves an extension of China's changing relationship with its neighbors as it grows stronger and perhaps a bit pushier. At a State Department news conference Monday, spokesperson Victoria Nuland was asked whether the United States is endorsing the map on the passports by virtue of accepting it from Chinese travelers. It's not, but the resulting exchange seems to demonstrate the degree to which the U.S. is striving to not take sides in the issue. Still, toward the end of Nuland's comments, she hints that the U.S. will play some sort of role in the intra-Asian diplomatic dispute. Here's the exchange, with the relevant lines about the U.S.'s role bolded: The U.S., as part of the Obama administration's "pivot to Asia," has seemed to seek out daylight between China and its neighbors, positioning itself as the friendlier alternative to Chinese leadership in East Asia. This has included playing a greater role in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which represents China's southern neighbors; President Obama's historic tour this month of Burma, Cambodia and Thailand; and the opening of Burma itself, which spent decades as a China-allied dictatorship before recently liberalizing. This passport skirmish is not going to dramatically change regional politics, of course, but the State Department might be seeking out a "conversation about it" as yet another way to emphasize the U.S. as a friendly regional mediator – especially when it comes to dealing with China.

China continues to deny carrying out cyberattacks against U.S.

BEIJING — China on Wednesday again denied that it has used cyberattacks to steal U.S. military and business secrets, after new accusations were leveled this week. “China opposes all forms of cyberattacks. China is also a victim of hacking,” Assistant Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang said during a news briefing previewing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with President Obama next week. Zheng noted that China and the United States have agreed to set up a working group to regularly discuss the issue. The White House has said that Obama will raise the issue next week, but Chinese officials responded to questions about it Wednesday with the same talking points they have long used. The increased scrutiny of China’s cyber-activities comes amid mounting evidence of cyber-intrusions and the theft of proprietary private and government data in the United States. On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported on a confidential report prepared for the Pentagon that revealed that the designs of more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems have been compromised by electronic intrusions. After years of using circumspect language on the subject, often avoiding publicly singling out China by name, the Obama administration has recently escalated its warnings to the country. At Wednesday’s news briefing, Zheng described the upcoming meeting — the first between the countries’ leaders since Xi’s elevation to the presidency and Obama’s reelection— as a chance for the two major powers to set up “a new model of China-U.S. relations.” He said the nations must “walk a new path that is different from traditional superpower confrontations, a new path under which big powers can live in harmony, cooperating with mutual benefit.” Liu Liu contributed to this report.

Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon, wants the U.S. to head for Mars

Question for Buzz Aldrin: Weren’t you scared, in that little spacecraft, descending to the surface of the moon and not knowing for sure that you’d ever make it back to Earth? “Fighter pilots have ice in their veins,” Aldrin answers. “Fear is a disabling emotion. It prevents you from thinking clearly.” Sunday will mark the 45th anniversary of the moment the world heard those amazing words from Aldrin’s Apollo 11 crewmate, the late Neil Armstrong — “Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” — that marked the first lunar landing. ****Aldrin, now 84, is making much of the anniversary. In a telephone interview, he said he hopes to drop into the White House and also hopes President Obama will use the anniversary to announce new ambitions for NASA and human spaceflight. Aldrin wants to see humans travel to Mars — and stay, permanently, something he thinks the U.S. government could accomplish in an international partnership that could include China. He’d like Obama’s successor to use the 50th anniversary of the landing — July 20, 2019 — to say something Kennedyesque, such as, “I believe that this nation should commit itself within two decades to leading international permanence on the planet Mars.” Could someone like SpaceX’s Elon Musk — who has said he’d like to go to Mars — pull off a Mars mission to the Red Planet? “I don’t think it’s going to be a multibillionaire who does this,” Aldrin says. It’s too expensive even for a tycoon, he suggested. The people who go must be prepared for it to be a one-way trip, living out their lives on Mars, he said. That’s more doable than round trips and would keep funding flowing to Mars exploration, unlike a flags-and-footprints stunt. “If we go and come back, and go and come back, I’m sure Congress will say, ‘Oh, we know how to do that, let’s spend the money somewhere else.’ And everything we will have invested will be sloughed aside,” he said. Aldrin has launched a social media campaign featuring a YouTube video in which celebrities and scientists relay their memories of Apollo 11. “I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things,” Aldrin says in the video. “The whole world celebrated our moon landing, but we missed the whole thing, because we were out of town.” Aldrin has spent the past 45 years as a living legend, and he creates a stir wherever he goes. His long-time assistant, Christina Korp, who used to work in the music industry, says, “I took this job to have a boring, quiet job. I had no idea what I was getting into. No rock star can hold a candle to Buzz Aldrin and his energy.” In his book “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration,” Aldrin recalls that his Mars ambitions weren’t shared by Armstrong, who thought the United States should focus on returning to the moon for longer-duration missions. (Armstrong, though taciturn by nature, became vocal in his final years about NASA strategy, and once sent me an on-background e-mail taking issue with a blog item in which I had been skeptical about a lunar return.) Aldrin writes about past visits to the White House with his crewmates: “Conversation in some cases turned to where the next step into the future should lie: Return to the moon or on to Mars? For me, Mars. Neil disagreed. He thought that the moon had more to teach us before we pressed onward to other challenges.” In his Mars book, Aldrin laments the passing of Armstrong and alludes to the obvious fact that the second man on the moon will never be as famous as the first: “My friend Neil took the small step but giant leap that changed the world, and he will forever be remembered as the person that represented a seminal moment in human history.” Of NASA, Aldrin told me, “I believe that we are — in other people’s terminology — adrift right now. We cannot take our own people to the space station. We invested $100 billion.” (NASA pays Russia to launch American astronauts to the International Space Station.) “I am extremely concerned as a patriotic Cold War veteran and Korean War veteran that we remain Number 1,” he said. “We are adrift.” Aldrin’s longtime friend, aerospace executive Norm Augustine, recalls being with Aldrin when he testified on Capitol Hill in favor of one-way missions to Mars. “Who would ever want to do that?” Augustine asked. To which Aldrin quickly responded: “Did you ever hear of the Pilgrims?”

Sending a Torah and other cultural artifacts from Earth to the moon, just in case

Think of Earth as a giant supercomputer, with the moon as our backup hard drive. That’s the vision behind plans to use the moon as off-planet storage for the religious, cultural and even genetic trappings of humanity. Proponents of this idea initially plan to rely on groups vying to win millions in a Google-backed space-flight competition, with the first of those missions possibly departing by the end of 2015. Eventually, commercial moon landers may help carry a diverse library of cultural and biological records to the lunar surface, to be preserved in case Earth suffers a pandemic plague, nuclear holocaust or lethal asteroid strike. The first artifacts to shoot for the moon might be three religious and philosophical texts. The Torah on the Moon project, based in Tel Aviv, has been courting private firms to deliver a handwritten Jewish scroll called a sefer Torah to the lunar surface. Later flights would carry Hindu scriptures called the Veda and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese philosophical work. Each document would be housed in a capsule designed to protect it from the moon’s harsh radiation and temperature changes for at least 10,000 years. “These three texts are among Earth’s most ancient documents, created over 3,000 years ago,” says Torah on the Moon founder Paul Aouizerate. “They are significant to billions of people.” Aouizerate says that the mission is one of cultural preservation. But the religious nature of the proposed cargo is likely to ruffle a few feathers. “The sefer Torah has unique symbolic value and is nowadays the most sacred object in Judaism,” says Nicholas de Lange, a researcher in Jewish and Hebrew studies at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “Such an object is supposed to be treated with extreme respect and care. I find it hard to believe that shooting it into space can fall under this heading.” The Torah on the Moon team had been hoping to send its first capsule up with a lander built by SpaceIL, an entrant in the Google Lunar X Prize, but SpaceIL says it won’t do so. Google is offering $20 million to the first privately funded group to build a robot that lands on the moon, travels about 550 yards and sends back two videos — all by the end of 2015. Eighteen teams from around the world are competing, including two U.S. firms that were recently awarded partnerships with NASA granting them access to testing labs and scientific expertise. Regardless of who takes home Google’s lunar gold, the Torah on the Moon project would offer to pay to piggyback on a mission that is capable of carrying its capsule. Last week, the engineering arm of the European Space Agency confirmed that it has been commissioned to test the space-hardiness of the capsule that would contain the sefer Torah. The moon has no atmosphere to trap heat, and the surface temperature around the equator rockets to a daytime high of about 253 degrees and plunges to 279 degrees below zero at night. ESA says the capsule failed to withstand such thermal extremes in early checks and has gone back to the Torah on the Moon team for a redesign. Aouizerate hopes to raise an estimated $16 million to $20 million by asking believers to sponsor religious scribes to pen each of the document’s 304,805 characters. Different funding models will be developed for the Hindu and Chinese documents. The texts would join a Bible left on the moon in 1971 by Apollo 15 commander David Scott. The red leather Bible sits on the control console of an Apollo moon buggy. The Christian practices of Apollo astronauts enraged atheist activists, who said that religion had no place on federally funded space missions. The Torah on the Moon project sidesteps that concern, since X Prize contenders are not allowed to accept government funding. The texts should also be the first of many objects sent into space in the name of preservation. “I don’t think these religions are claiming the moon. It’s about saving our culture, saving the humanities,” says Naveen Jain, chief executive of Moon Express, one of the X Prize contenders. Jain thinks future projects should find a representative sample of humanity, perhaps a million people, take their DNA and store it on the moon. “So in case of an asteroid strike that wipes us out like the dinosaurs, humanity can be saved,” he says. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says that the moon could even become a “cosmic tombstone” if humans become extinct. “We should be using it to store the best humanity has ever had to offer, like the works of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Schubert and Shakespeare,” he says. The Torah on the Moon team is expected to announce details of its plans, including which team will fly its capsule to the moon, in the next few months. Roger Launius of the National Air and Space Museum  thinks it apt that such projects should be tied to religion, because  space-flight advocacy has many of the hallmarks of religion . “There is salvation theology, in that they believe the human race will be saved by space flight’s ability to make us a multi-planetary species,” he says. “And we have pilgrimages at gatherings like launches, which are like a euphoric religious experience.” Space stories from The Washington Post: Astronomers find a ‘Mega-Earth,’ rethink planet rules Why do U.S. spy satellites rely on Russian rockets? Series: The future of NASA and space exploration SpaceX’s new Dragon V2 spacecraft is gorgeous

The right way to play the China card on North Korea

_Jake Sullivan was national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and director of policy planning in the Obama administration. Victor Cha is former director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council and served as deputy head of the U.S. delegation for the six-party talks in the George W. Bush administration._ North Korea’s July 4 intercontinental ballistic missile test raises hard questions for the Trump administration: Is there any path forward that does not lead either to war or to living with a nuclear North Korea that can hit the continental United States? Can effective diplomacy prevent the “major, major conflict” that President Trump has talked about? There is growing recognition that the old playbook won’t work. Reviving old agreements North Korea has already broken would be fruitless. The Chinese won’t deliver on meaningful pressure. And a military strike could lead to all-out war resulting in millions of casualties. We need to consider a new approach to diplomacy. That means playing the China card, but not the way it has been played until now. It’s not enough to ask China to pressure Pyongyang to set up a U.S.-North Korea negotiation. China has to be a central part of the negotiation, too. China, rather than the United States, should be paying for North Korea to halt and roll back its nuclear and missile programs. Here’s the logic. The best option would be for China to agree to work with us and South Korea toward getting new leadership in North Korea that is less obsessed with weapons of mass destruction. But this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future for a litany of reasons: China’s historical ties to its little communist brother; its concerns about regime collapse; its uncertainty about alternative viable power centers to the Kim family; its mistrust of U.S. motives; and its strained relations with South Korea. The next option would be for China to cut off, or at least severely curtail, its commerce with North Korea, which accounts for 85 to 90 percent of North Korea’s trade, to restrain Pyongyang. But as Trump has recognized in recent tweets, China is unlikely to go this far right now, for the same reasons. So we are left with a less dramatic form of carrots-and-sticks diplomacy, backed by increasing pressure. But it can’t be a repeat of previous rounds. In the past, China has largely left it to the United States to put inducements on the table. Together the nuclear agreements executed by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations cost the United States a half-billion dollars for denuclearization via monthly energy-assistance payments to Pyongyang. (Japan and South Korea also paid their fair share; China paid only a small amount in the Bush agreement.) Meanwhile, China continued to enjoy its trade relationship with North Korea, extracting mineral resources at a fraction of world market prices. Now China is back, pushing us to the bargaining table, as evidenced by its statement with Russia after Tuesday’s missile test calling for the United States to give up military exercises in exchange for a missile-testing freeze. We should reject the freeze-for- freeze. But beyond that, we should tell China that it has to pay to play. The basic trade would be Chinese disbursements to Pyongyang, as well as security assurances, in return for constraints on North Korea’s program. China would be paying not just for North Korean coal, but for North Korean compliance. In a Chinese freeze-and-rollback agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency would monitor compliance. If North Korea cheated, China would not be receiving what it paid for. The logical thing would be for it to withhold economic benefits until compliance resumed. Of course, China might continue to fund the regime anyway. Or North Korea could very well reject such a deal from the start. But these scenarios would leave us no worse off than we are now. And it might well put us in a stronger position. Because China didn’t get what it paid for, or got the cold shoulder from Pyongyang, it might become more receptive to working with us and our allies on other options. Why would China agree to this plan, given that it has never been willing to put its economic leverage to real use before? Beijing wants a diplomatic off-ramp to the current crisis. President Xi Jinping is still seeking a good relationship with Trump in this critical year of China’s 19th Party Congress. Furthermore, Chinese frustrations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have grown after his execution of family members and regime figures close to China. All this may give the Trump administration marginally more leverage than its predecessors had. We also have an important stick. If China refuses to proceed along these lines, we would be better positioned to pursue widespread secondary sanctions against Chinese firms doing business with North Korea beyond the Treasury Department’s sanctioning of a Chinese bank last week. We would be left with little choice. Of course, this idea is no silver bullet. It doesn’t answer the question of how to get verifiable, enforceable, durable constraints on North Korea. It won’t go very far if what North Korea really cares about is extracting something from the United States. But North Korea is the land of lousy options. We should be looking for a strategy that gives us not only a better chance of success but also some advantages if it fails. **Read more on this issue:** Andrei Lankov: The inconvenient truth about North Korea and China The Post’s View: The North Korean threat is on parade. Can Trump get China to act? Chuck Schumer: Trump railed against China while campaigning. Now he’s gone soft. Klingner and Terry: What we learned in talks with North Korean representatives

American presidents have a long history of walking back tough talk on China

When news broke that Donald Trump had talked on the phone with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-Wen, it was widely criticized as a foreign policy gaffe. A U.S. president had not spoken on the phone with a leader of Taiwan in decades for fear of upsetting the People’s Republic of China, which considers Taiwan a rogue province.  The telephone call was totally unprecedented. But the combative attitude toward China was not. For decades, U.S. presidents have come into office with sharply negative rhetoric and plans toward China. What usually happens next is predictable, scholars say. David Lampton, director of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said there is a long tradition of politicians issuing bumper sticker statements against China. “And then when they get in a position of government, they find it’s very deleterious to uphold that proposal,” he said. Ronald Reagan, for example, entered office in 1981 with already-rocky relations with China. During the campaign, he had criticized incumbent President Jimmy Carter for terminating diplomatic relations with Taiwan as the U.S. normalized relations with China in 1978. Reagan repeatedly promised to restore official ties with Taiwan and forge new weapons deals.  In the 1992 presidential campaign, which came shortly after the bloody protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Bill Clinton famously inveighed against the “butchers of Beijing.” Clinton attacked incumbent George H.W. Bush for “coddling dictators” in China and “sending emissaries to raise a toast with those who crushed democracy.” Clinton promised he would force China to change — and in his first year in office, he issued an executive order requiring China to improve its human rights record before the country’s favored trading status could be renewed.  History repeated to some extent with George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bush described China as a “competitor,” not a “strategic partner” on the campaign trail. Then the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, and Bush found he needed Chinese support in his global war on terrorism, Lampton said. In his first year in office, Bush described relations with China as “candid, constructive and cooperative.” Like Trump, Obama promised on the campaign trail to label China a currency manipulator. But he never followed through. Obama later faced criticism for choosing to delay a meeting with the Dalai Lama until after he had met with Chinese President Hu Jintao. That backlash may have helped persuade Obama to take a tougher stance on China's territorial expansion in Asia and on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a global trade deal that left China out. As both pundits and events keep reminding us, Trump appears likely to be a different sort of president altogether. And the call by the president-elect to Taiwan is perhaps more of a diplomatic break with China than ever before. But Trump would not be “by any means the first person to run for president saying one thing about China and then moving to a more accommodative policy,” Lampton said. Many leaders have found it too challenging to accomplish their goals while at odds with the world's second-largest economy. “Trump is by nature a negotiator, a dealer. So I think in all probability Trump will have to, and may find it desirable, to negotiate back from some of these positions.”

U.S. missile destroyer sailed close to island claimed by China

A U.S. missile destroyer passed close to a tiny disputed island in the South China Sea late on Friday in the Pentagon’s latest assertion of U.S. naval freedom despite growing territorial feuds there. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the ship, the USS Curtis Wilbur, passed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, one of a series of coral islands and reefs known as the Paracel Islands, whose ownership is disputed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam. “This operation was about challenging excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the United States and others, not about territorial claims to land features,” Davis said in a statement early on Saturday. China’s Ministry of Defense spokesman Yang Yujun said in a statement the U.S. action “severely violated the law.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico “It damaged the peaceful, safe and good order in relevant waters and is not beneficial to regional peace and stability,” said Yang. This week’s action is not the first time in recent months the Pentagon has flexed its muscles in the area. In October, Chinese officials described as “dangerous and provocative” a U.S. decision to send a warship within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island developed by China.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico U.S. officials are particularly worried by the growing territorial claims from China, which has launched an aggressive campaign to claim and build up islands in the South China Sea and is also scrambling to augment its military power at sea. A recent study warned the South China Sea could become “virtually a Chinese lake” by 2030 if China continues its rush to acquire new naval assets.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Defense Sec. Ashton Carter has signaled his intent to defy Chinese attempts to project expanding influence in the South China Sea, and to ensure that sea lanes remain open for international military and commercial use.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The Obama administration is facing pressure from critics to more actively defy Chinese claims and to reassure smaller Asian allies that the biggest Asian power won’t be permitted to expand unabated. But there are fears such patrols could lead to a dangerous escalation in military tensions between Beijing and Washington.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico China has characterized such actions as an attempt to militarize the South China Sea, and has said U.S. shows of force may prompt it to accelerate construction on man-made islands.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Davis said were no Chinese ships in the area at the time of the destroyer’s transit, and the Pentagon did not notify any of the three countries of its plans to transit the area. “This operation demonstrated … that we will fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” Davis said. _Simon Denyer and Gu Jinglu contributed to this report from Beijing._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Japan, China struggle to curb tensions

BEIJING — Judging by some of the commentary in the Chinese media, an outside observer might think war with Japan is imminent. “The Chinese military could win a war over the Diaoyu Islands in half an hour,” Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a Chinese military scholar, was quoted as saying last week. Chinese hawks are not the only ones raising the spector of a military clash between Asia’s two largest economies. Since Tokyo infuriated Beijing last September by nationalizing some of the disputed Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and Taiwan, tensions between the two countries have escalated. Both militaries regularly fly fighter jets in the airspace above the islands and have scrambled them against each other. Japan’s coast guard on Monday cited three Chinese vessels in waters near the islands. In response to warnings to leave the area, the Chinese ships broadcast messages over loudspeakers in Japanese and Chinese stating, “This is historically Chinese territory.” It is the latest in a series of bellicose exchanges that some observers fear could lead to a clash. “There is indeed a risk of an accident, although the possibility that it could escalate further into a full-scale conflict is very, very small,” said Huang Dahui, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing. In the U.S., which could see itself dragged into a conflict as Japan’s military ally, diplomacy has moved up a gear in recent days. Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs, said on a visit to Tokyo last week: “We’ve made very clear our desire to see cooler heads prevail.” The U.S. was criticized by Beijing on Monday after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, argued last week that Washington opposed “any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration” of the islands. “The U.S. bears undeniable historical responsibility,’’ for the situation, Hong Lei, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying. Washington, anxious to avoid a confrontation with China so early in the tenure of Xi Jinping, the ruling Communist party’s new leader, has told Japan not to give China an excuse to overreact. But Japan also has a new leader and both Shinzo Abe, prime minister, and Xi will fear that showing weakness could damage them domestically. In China, the military and a nationalist public hope that Xi, who is expected to lead the world’s most populous country for the next decade, will assert China’s interests more forcefully than Hu Jintao, his predecessor. The Chinese government has seized on Tokyo’s nationalization move to cement its own claim to the Senkakus with a series of legal, administrative and military moves. In Japan, the Liberal Democratic party and its nationalist leader, Abe, won a landslide election in December after a campaign which promised a tougher stance on China. Abe has quietly dropped a campaign proposal to station civilian government officials on the islands but risks alienating conservative supporters if he fails to respond to perceived Chinese provocation. Japanese authorities also fear that if they don’t challenge China, Beijing could present Japan’s passivity as evidence of a lack of control over the islands. Already, Beijing has called on Tokyo to recognize a change in the status quo. Echoing that stance, Liu Jiangyong, an international relations expert at Tsinghua University, claims that “the Diaoyu islands are by no means exclusively controlled by Japan.” Since taking office, Abe has called for more defense spending and initiated a program of regional diplomacy that looks aimed squarely at countering China. At the same time, advisers in Beijing and Tokyo insist the governments want to de-escalate, but are struggling over how to lower tensions. Kuni Miyake, a former Japanese foreign ministry official and now a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, believes any climbdown would have to be negotiated secretly. “There is a face issue involved, and neither side wants to be the one to initiate [a de-escalation].” One step Tokyo might take would be to abandon its official position that no territorial dispute exists. People close to the government say Japan might accept adjudication by the International Court of Justice, but only if China requests it. “The Chinese government will not do that,” said a person who has been advising the government on relations with Japan. “Japan has had actual control of the islands for a long time, and that would not be in China’s favor.” **— Financial Times** Geoff Dyer in Washington and Zhao Tianqi also contributed to this report.

The danger next door

CHINA IS becoming more assertive abroad, taking aggressive measures to enforce its broad maritime claims, founding a new $100 billion Asian infrastructure investment bank, and boosting its defense spending year after year. While this could be worrisome, there is one way in which China’s rising power could be useful: to curb the expanding nuclear arsenal of its neighbor and longtime client state, North Korea. In years past, Chinese experts were skeptical of North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities. Now that is changing. In February, Chinese experts made a surprising statement at a closed-door meeting with U.S. experts at the China Institute of International Studies, the foreign ministry’s think-tank, according to an account in the Wall Street Journal. The occasion was a nonofficial discussion of U.S.-China security issues. The Chinese asserted that they believe North Korea now has 20 nuclear warheads and the capability to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to double that arsenal by next year, the newspaper said. It is not known exactly on what evidence the new estimate is based, but it is higher than the U.S. estimate of 10 to 16 warheads and parallels a recently published report from the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, which sketched out three possible scenarios for the north’s nuclear arsenal. The middle scenario was 50 nuclear warheads in five years. A key technical issue is how much fissile material North Korea has and how much it can generate with indigenous technology. In addition to plutonium, North Korea has pursued a second path to the bomb, using uranium enriched in centrifuges. There is uncertainty about the results of this effort, but recent estimates from the Chinese experts and the U.S.-Korea Institute suggest North Korea is not standing still. Siegfried Hecker, director of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Project at Stanford University, commented last month, “During the past 12 years we have witnessed the North Korean program grow from having the option for a bomb in 2003, to having a handful of bombs five years later, to having an expanding nuclear arsenal now.” The United States for years has held out the hope that China would press North Korea to become more responsible. China never exactly says no, but in the end its reluctance to destabilize the North Korean regime seems to trump any anxiety it might feel about its neighbor’s nuclear capability, let alone that regime’s execrable treatment of its own people. Could Beijing recalculate? China has shown signs of exasperation with North Korea’s enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Un, and if China possesses about 250 nuclear weapons, then its leaders should be unsettled to hear from their own experts that North Korea is ramping up to 50 or even 100 in the next decade. Certainly, China — and only China — has the leverage to halt North Korea’s steady climb to becoming a nuclear power. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: This is no time to lose sight of North Korea’s human rights catastrophe Anne Applebaum: North Korea’s incomprehensible regime Shin Dong-hyuk: North Korea will not silence me

With Trump, Gingrich and GOP calling the shots, NASA may go back to the moon

Right this minute, though, no one seems to know what's going to happen with America's civilian space agency. The chaotic Trump transition operation has yet to send a delegation to NASA headquarters. NASA's in-house transition team is standing by, and you can imagine that people are getting a bit jittery. There are deadlines to meet. Everything's in a holding pattern. In the spirit of promiscuous speculation, we will float this notion: The moon is back!  There's a saying: The moon is a red destination, an asteroid is a blue destination.         NASA headquarters has been preparing for the transition for months, but the Trump team has gone through upheaval, with Chris Christie and his folks ousted. It appears Trump's NASA transition efforts are being led by Mark Albrecht, who was associated with the first President Bush's ill-fated Space Exploration Initiative of 1989 (fleets of spaceships, a moon base, Mars, the whole kit and kaboodle, shot down when rumors spread that it would cost a gazillion dollars).  He mentioned one of his earliest ideas: That when at least 13,000 people live on the moon, they could petition to have statehood. (To which the people of the District of Columbia might well say: Get in line.)

The U.S. needs to tame the cyber-dragon

THREE MAJOR U.S. newspapers — TheWashington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — reported recently that Chinese intruders hacked into their computer networks, snooping for passwords and information about coverage of China. The intrusions at the Times and the Journal coincided with an extraordinary period in recent months, during which China’s leaders and their extended families were shown by investigative newspaper reports in the papers to have amassed huge fortunes and one of China’s most prominent politicians, Bo Xilai, fell from grace in a corruption scandal. China denies carrying out cyber-espionage, theft and disruption. But there is a growing amount of evidence that it is behind one of history’s great heists of intellectual property, a vast and multi-tentacled collection drive aimed at corporations, the U.S. government, universities, stock exchanges and think tanks, among others. The newspapers are only the latest example of companies that found footprints of the Chinese cyber-dragon in their corridors. China’s motivation in economic espionage is to steal technology that will help leapfrog generations of development; going after the military and newspapers is more like classic spying. The U.S. government spies on China, too, although U.S. intelligence agencies do not steal technology for the private sector. All of this raises a question: How should the United States respond? In the absence of action by Congress, President Obama has just issued an executive order intended to help the private sector defend against cyberattacks by China and others. But discussions with China itself have gone nowhere. The time is ripe for something stronger. In an interview with reporters before leaving office, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the United States must make it clear to Beijing that there will be consequences for unbridled hacking. Cold War-style arms control treaties are probably not workable in cyberspace, where attacks unfold at lightning speed and at the hands of hard-to-find hackers. But the United States could begin to speak more firmly to China’s leadership about the problem, perhaps threatening to deny visas or expel those found to be involved in economic espionage. If a little pressure does not succeed, the United States could ponder more aggressive options, such as whether to launch offensive cyber-assaults to preemptively disarm adversaries. That would be delicate and risky. As Ms. Clinton noted, this “can become a very unwelcome and even dangerous tit-for-tat that could be a crescendo of consequences, here and around the world, that no one wants to see happen.” China is no longer the poor and isolated nation of Mao’s day. In cyberspace, it must behave like a global economic superpower and not like a petty pickpocket. **More on this topic:** The Post’s View: Cyberwar, out of the shadows The Post’s View: The defense secretary’s warning The Post’s View: The U.S. needs frank talk about cyberweapons The Post’s View: Defenseless against cyberattacks The Post’s View: Stockpiling arms against cyberattacks

U.S. urges China to help with Islamic State in Iraq

BEIJING — President Obama’s national security adviser urged China to help respond to the growing threat of the radical Islamic State while meeting this week with top Chinese officials. Susan E. Rice, here for three days to lay the groundwork for a November visit by Obama, received no commitment that Beijing would join the fight in Iraq. But a senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “The Chinese expressed interest.” China has its own concerns about rising domestic terrorist threats by Islamist extremists, especially in the Xinjiang region of western China. American and Chinese aides are still discussing what a Chinese contribution would look like, said the senior official, declining to go into detail. “We’re trying to build an international coalition, and it’s important China be a part of it,” the official said. Rice also raised concerns about Chinese fighter jets intercepting American surveillance planes. U.S.-Chinese relations have undergone stresses recently, and Rice had a daunting series of bumps to smooth over. Her meetings included a 45-minute sit-down with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The strains include a recent interview in which Obama characterized China as passive when it comes to addressing international crises. “They have been free riders for the last 30 years and it’s worked really well for them,” Obama said in an interview with the New York Times. “And I’ve joked sometimes, when my inbox starts stacking up. I said, ‘Can’t we be a little bit more like China?’ Nobody ever seems to expect them to do anything when this stuff comes up.” Things only worsened after the U.S. military released images last month of a Chinese military jet buzzing a U.S. surveillance aircraft off the Chinese coast, condemning it as a reckless attempt by China to intimidate without regard to the diplomatic and political fallout a collision could spark. Chinese state media responded by accusing the United States of unwarranted spying. On the prickly issue of democratic elections in Hong Kong, U.S. officials were cautious in characterizing Rice’s discussion. China’s legislature recently ruled that residents could vote in an upcoming election but severely restricted the choice of candidates — a move many Hong Kong residents decried as tantamount to sham elections. “Hong Kong did come up, and it was important for us to raise universal suffrage. For us, that means one-man, one-vote,” the senior U.S. official said. Pressed, another U.S. official said, “The ability for people of HK to choose their leadership based on the will of voters is fundamentally what we’re looking for. One step is what was announced, and there’s further to go.” In recent weeks, Chinese officials have bristled at even faint State Department criticism of their restrictions on Hong Kong’s elections, telling U.S. officials, through Chinese state media, that it is a domestic concern. The Obama administration has portrayed Rice’s visit as a sign that it remains committed to its goal of pivoting strategic attention and resources to Asia. According to U.S. officials, other issues Rice raised with foreign and defense ministers included China’s maritime disputes with U.S. allies in Asia, retaliatory Chinese restrictions on foreign journalists’ visas, North Korea, human rights and the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Japan and China ratchet up their island dispute

GIVEN PRESIDENT Obama’s preoccupation with ending what he calls “a decade of war,” it’s hard to believe that the United States could be dragged into a military conflict in the western Pacific over a group of tiny, uninhabited islands claimed by both Japan and China. Probably, it won’t be. Yet thanks to a disturbing confluence of events in those countries and Mr. Obama’s own commitments, the chance that it will happen is rising. The Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyu by China, have been under Japanese administration since 1895; for decades, China agreed to leave its claim to them on a back burner. But Japan’s nationalizationin September of three of the islets — undertaken in an attempt to head off an attempt by a nationalist politician to gain hold of them — provided China’s military and Communist leadership with a pretext for rabble-rousing. In recent weeks Beijing’s provocations have escalated from dispatching surveillance ships to the islands to scrambling warplanes in response to Japan’s. China’s state-controlled media have been whipping up something like war fever, with one paper declaring that a military fight is “more likely” and the country “needs to prepare for the worst.” Disturbingly, this provocative and dangerous campaign has been overseen by the new Communist leadership under Xi Jinping, which has ample motive to divert attention from domestic problems. The political climate in Tokyo, too, gives cause for concern. The new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is a nationalist who has packed his cabinet with politicians who share his aims of boosting Japanese defense spending and standing up to China. Japan has refused negotiations over the islands, declaring that there is nothing to discuss. The Obama administration has been trying to defuse the dispute, dispatching a senior State Department official to Tokyo last week to call for “cooler heads to prevail.” But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also reiterated a position the administration first adopted two years ago: A security treaty binding the United States to defend Japan against attack applies to the islets. That public stance may have been intended to deter China from provoking a crisis, but it also magnifies the stakes for Washington. Should China attempt to seize control of the territory, Mr. Obama could have to choose between backing Japan in a military confrontation and a climb-down that would undermine the “pivot to Asia” he has placed at the center of his foreign policy. Fortunately, there were signs of a cooling-off this week. Mr. Abe dispatched an emissary to Beijing with a letter for Mr. Xi. The Japanese leader, who has been invited to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Obama next month, should be looking for ways to ease tensions without rewarding Beijing’s belligerence. With U.S. help, it ought to be possible to return the issue of the Senkakus to the back burner, where it belongs. **Read more from Opinions:** The Post’s View: Chinese media open up about Beijing smog The Post’s View: Chinese press for more civil liberties The Post’s View: Shinzo Abe gets a second chance to lead Japan The Post’s View: Tokyo and Washington make a welcome step forward

NASA’s science missions bring the universe into sharper focus even as agency struggles with manned flight

Life is tough these days at NASA, the space agency that can’t launch anyone into space. It wrestles with basic questions: Where to go? How to get there? When? And for what purpose? It killed a plan to return to the moon and now is building a jumbo rocket to go to . . . well, it’s unclear. Maybe to an asteroid: a rock to be named later. NASA is betting that private companies will create a commercial taxi for flights to low Earth orbit. In the meantime, NASA astronauts ride on aging Russian rockets that look increasingly creaky. At any given moment, a few Americans are on the international space station, circling the planet every 90 minutes, nearly as anonymous as they are weightless. But even as NASA goes through this awkward transition in human space flight, the agency has one bright spot: science. NASA’s scientific missions — robotic probes, telescopes, satellites — are bringing Earth, the sun, the solar system and the universe into sharper focus. Science at NASA is not without serious problems, a fact expected to be reflected in the Obama administration’s budget request Monday. The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble, has gone far over budget and is still years from launch. The next Mars rover has also experienced cost overruns. As a result, planetary science, one of the divisions within NASA’s science directorate, will suffer a sharp cut under the new Obama budget, according to scientists familiar with the administration’s plans. Scientists expect that NASA will terminate its collaboration on two European-led robotic Mars missions scheduled for later this decade. The question is: To what extent will future science missions be squeezed, delayed or terminated by the NASA budget crunch? What’s certain is that NASA has managed in recent years to launch a formidable fleet of scientific instruments. NASA’s internal chart shows 86 missions, involving 96 spacecraft, either in service or preparation. That doesn’t include the two European Mars missions. It does include other international collaborations, and the extended operations of aging spacecraft that have completed their primary mission and are still blinking away. One probe, New Horizons, is on its way to Pluto. Another, Messenger, has been orbiting Mercury since March. A lunar orbiter launched in 2009 has mapped the moon in unprecedented detail, and two more NASA spacecraft achieved lunar orbit six weeks ago on a mission to study the moon’s gravitational field and interior structure. NASA’s Juno spacecraft blasted off in August on a five-year mission to Jupiter. The robotic probe Cassini continues to study Saturn, and in a week will make another close pass of the huge moon Titan. Kepler, a space telescope launched in 2009, has found 61 planets by last count, with many more candidate planets yet to be confirmed. The longer Kepler observes a small patch of deep space, the more likely it is that it will detect a true Earth twin — a planet that’s both Earth-size and in a propitious orbit that puts it in a star’s “habitable zone.” NASA is eager to see what happens on the morning of Aug. 6, when the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory, launched in November, lands in a crater and dispatches a souped-up rover, Curiosity, to look for signs that Mars was once warm, wet and teeming with Martian life. The laboratory will land on Mars using a never-before-deployed technology called a sky crane. “It’s going to be an incredible nail-biter during the descent and landing, but then we’re going to have this amazing rover,” said John Grunsfeld, the astronaut and astronomer who became famous for his work fixing the Hubble and who now heads NASA’s science directorate. Meanwhile, the sun, which has been in the news lately after spitting massive amounts of plasma at Earth and inciting a spectacular round of Northern Lights, is being scrutinized by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Saturday marked the second anniversary of its launch. The observatory has made discoveries that help scientists understand the phenomenon of “space weather.” It has found, for example, that solar flares are longer-lasting than anyone previously knew, and has managed to detect them when they’re in an embryonic phase deep beneath the sun’s surface. “What we are learning from this is pretty amazing. It’s staggering,” said Madhulika “Lika” Guhathakurta, who works on the solar observatory as the lead scientist with NASA’s “Living With a Star” project. She added: “Doing science with robotic experiments compared with doing human space flight is a piece of cake.” Grunsfeld said the science missions benefit from a competitive environment. There are many great ideas for scientific missions in space. The scientists compete fiercely for limited funds. The science missions sometimes suffer from the same problem that bedevils human spaceflight — flat budgets that extend the timeline of a program, push many of the expenses into the future, and require standing armies of employees. That boosts a project’s ultimate cost. But the science missions still enjoy political and popular support. They have specific goals, and often produce dramatic results — such as the awesome images obtained by the Hubble telescope during its two decades in space. “The payoff from science missions is pretty clear — new knowledge — accompanied in some cases by pretty pictures that make it publicly accessible. The payoff from human spaceflight is not nearly as clear and still controversial,” said John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. Human space flight isn’t a process that can turn on a dime, as NASA’s recent strategic decisions have shown. Inertial forces are powerful. And because there’s so much money involved, there are multiple stakeholders, including politicians representing states with NASA centers and major aerospace contractors. Under pressure from powerful senators, NASA will pour billions of dollars into the SLS, the “Space Launch System,” which would create a heavy-lift rocket capable of flying to the moon or a distant asteroid. Critics have dubbed it the Senate Launch System. The current schedule indicates that the rocket wouldn’t be ready for its first flight — unmanned — until 2017, and then in 2021 it would have a second flight, this time with astronauts aboard. “To say with a straight face we’re going to spend $20 billion between now and 2021 for two launches, you know, is hard for a disinterested observer to accept,” Logsdon said. Whether that rocket will ever fly is unclear, Logsdon said. He said the program is “in multiple dimensions fragile.” Mission uncertainty is a serious problem in the ambitious and difficult enterprise of space travel. Grunsfeld, whose career has straddled the human exploration and science sides of NASA, offered a comparison to the pharaohs and their pyramids. When they made a decision to build a pyramid, he said, they didn’t revisit the decision every year.

U.S., China agree to cooperate on Korean crisis

BEIJING — Secretary of State John F. Kerry lobbied China on Saturday to lean harder on its Marxist ally North Korea, suggesting that Washington might reverse certain military moves in the region if the North gives up its nuclear weapons ambitions. Kerry argued that the North’s escalating belligerence threatens the entire Pacific region, including China’s interests. He won a modest restatement of the shared goal of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula and a public call from China’s foreign policy chief, Yang Jiechi, for a way out of the tension “peacefully, through dialogue.” That was a clear warning to North Korea that its main economic and political protector does not want a new Asian war. “People in the region understand what the balance of the power is in the situation,” Kerry said during a news conference closing his day of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other officials. “Everybody is hoping that reasonableness will prevail.” Kerry said he would not discuss specific promises or plans by China in dealing with its ally, saying China may or may not choose to reveal its program publicly. But he claimed a clear commitment between the United States and China to “bear down” together to reduce the risk of war or nuclear proliferation from North Korea. He dangled the possibility that if North Korea gave up its nuclear weapons capability the United States might reverse military actions that have unnerved China, including additional missile defenses in Guam and Japan that Kerry said have been in “direct response to the fact that American interest and American territory” were threatened by North Korea. “It would be our hope in the long run that — or, better yet, in the short run — that we can address that,” Kerry said. China shares the U.S. view that a new missile launch from North Korea now would be “unwanted and unwarranted,” Kerry said, and he appealed openly to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to “join in seeking a negotiated solution.” That was a reference to possible new talks with North Korea nearly four years after international negotiations that included China and the United States collapsed. The United States and South Korea welcomed the prospect of talks under the right conditions, part of an effort this past week to reduce tensions. China agreed to work with the United States on starting a new round of talks. North Korea’s recent threatening moves could be a bid to raise the stakes for such talks, and Kerry was clearly leery of appearing too eager. The United States and China agreed to follow up quickly on Saturday’s joint agreement, he said. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will visit China within weeks. Kerry’s deputy, William J. Burns, and intelligence agency officials will also come to Beijing soon to collaborate on North Korea, Kerry said. “From this moment forward, we are committed to taking actions in order to make good on that goal,” Kerry said before a dinner with Yang. “We are determined to make that goal a reality. China and the United States must together take steps in order to achieve the goal of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.” U.S. and Asian officials say China alone has the economic and political leverage with North Korea to make the case to Kim that he must step back from a confrontation that has been building for months. “China is firmly committed to upholding peace and stability and advancing the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula,” Yang said. The United States is trying to appeal to China’s self-interest, arguing that North Korea has become a liability instead of an asset, undermining the central Chinese goal of stability and making China look ineffectual. North Korea has defied Chinese warnings, including not to conduct a third nuclear test, and recent Chinese statements about the North reflect growing frustration and alarm. “I think it’s clear to everybody in the world that no country in the world has as close a relationship or as significant an impact on the DPRK than China,” Kerry said Friday in Seoul, using the initials of North Korea’s formal name. “China has an enormous ability to help make a difference here.” China has prevented the collapse of impoverished North Korea with huge fuel subsidies, favorable trade arrangements and food aid for a nation unable to feed itself. Its leverage over Pyongyang comes from that assistance and from the two nations’ long-standing political alliance. China backed North Korea during the Korean War and has long seen its de facto client state as a valuable buffer against U.S.-backed South Korea and the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed there. Chinese leaders whom Kerry met with earlier Saturday made oblique references to the tense North Korean standoff in brief public remarks. “I must say there are immense common interests between China and the United States,” Premier Li Keqiang told Kerry through an interpreter. “Our common interests far outweigh our differences.” Li said both are big countries and added, “We shoulder the responsibility for peace and stability in our region and the world.” Kerry told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that he hoped to launch a broader cooperation “to define for both of us what the model relationship should be and how two great powers, China and the United States, can work effectively to solve problems.” In addition to a third nuclear test this year and a successful long-range missile test in December, North Korea has made a series of threats and symbolic moves, such as officially canceling the 60-year armistice that ended the Korean War and shuttering a showcase joint economic project with South Korea. The threat of conflict with North Korea is dominating Kerry’s first trip to Asia as secretary of state, overshadowing economic and trade issues at the heart of the gradually warming relationship between the United States and China. The North Korea issue also partly pushed aside U.S. concerns over Chinese military expansion, human rights practices and alleged cybercrime, although U.S. officials said there would be no quid pro quo of lessened U.S. pressure on those issues in return for Chinese help reining in its ally. Kerry addressed the crisis directly in Seoul on Thursday, assuring a jittery ally that the United States will defend it. Both Kerry and South Korean leaders appealed for calm. North Korea’s Kim has readied midrange missiles for a possible symbolic test launch, but Kerry’s visit to nearby Seoul passed without that warning shot.

Reported North Korean nuclear test signals snub of China, fraying ties

BEIJING — North Korea may have explained Wednesday’s announced hydrogen bomb test as a response to U.S. “hostility,” but experts say it may more accurately reflect deteriorating relations with China. The question now is how Beijing will respond: not by abandoning its troublesome ally, experts agree, but perhaps by supporting further sanctions against it. Whether that would have any effect is in doubt. “In a way, this is a protest against Beijing,” said Bo Zhiyue, director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Center at Victoria University of Wellington. “They are saying: ‘We can do whatever we want. This shows our independence, and we don’t need your approval.’ ” Scientists and officials say the test almost certainly did not involve a hydrogen bomb. But the fourth test of any kind of nuclear device by the isolated country would signal its continuing defiance of the outside world — including China, which has long expressed displeasure with Pyongyang’s nuclear program. On Wednesday, China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said North Korea had “ignored” objections from the international community to its staging of such tests. “China firmly opposes this,” the ministry said in a statement. “We urge North Korea to fulfill its promise of denuclearization and stop any actions that would worsen the situation.” Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regularly scheduled news conference that Beijing had not been warned before the test and would summon Pyongyang’s ambassador in Beijing to lodge a protest. But experts say Beijing’s influence over Pyongyang has diminished since Kim Jong Un took over as North Korea’s leader at the end of 2011 and Xi Jinping became president of China in 2013. The two men have not met since assuming power, with Xi even snubbing his counterpart by visiting South Korea first in 2014. In October, there was talk of a thaw when Xi sent an envoy to attend a military parade in Pyongyang with a signed letter carrying the Chinese president’s “best wishes” to Kim. But relations swiftly turned frigid again in December, after Kim declared that his country had developed a hydrogen bomb. Within 48 hours, a glamorous North Korean girl group, the Moranbong Band, packed up and left Beijing just before a scheduled debut concert there. That was less than a month ago. “The Moranbong Band incident basically revealed North Korea’s intentions, and you could see that communication between China and North Korea is quite bad,” said Xuan Dongri, director of Northeast Asia Studies at Yanbian University in northeastern China. “China and North Korea’s understanding of each other is deteriorating further.” Bo, of Victoria University of Wellington, said a key problem in the relationship has been the centralization of power in Beijing under Xi. Instead of the multi-faceted policy toward North Korea that prevailed under Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, with some senior leaders advocating engagement and others taking a harder line, Xi is now calling all the shots, Bo said. Since Xi has not met Kim and has his hands full with domestic and foreign-policy challenges, there is little meaningful dialogue taking place and very little internal debate on how best to influence Pyongyang, Bo added. “You need to have a connection if you want to convince or persuade the other side,” he said. “If you don’t have a connection, where is the leverage?” Bo said Xi was “caught in a dilemma,” reluctant to hew closer to the U.S. approach of isolating and punishing North Korea but left “powerless” to prevent North Korea’s nuclear program. Analysts are not predicting a complete breakdown in Sino-North Korean ties. Nor do they foresee North Korea abandoning the nuclear program that has become a key pillar of its regime’s declared legitimacy, at least not soon. But some suggest that this test poses a particular challenge for China. “Beijing will face increased pressure both domestically and internationally to punish and rein in Kim Jong Un and to ultimately force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons,” said Yanmei Xie, senior China analyst with the International Crisis Group in Beijing. “But there is likely to be a repeat of the worn playbook of denunciation, tightening of sanctions and calling for resurrection of the six-party talks.” North Korea pulled out of those negotiations with South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan over its nuclear program in 2009. On Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Hua, said the talks were the “only practical and effective way to solve the North Korea problem.” China is North Korea's largest trading partner and supplies most of its neighbor's oil and gas, as well as about half of its foreign aid. But it has been unwilling to pull the plug for fear of toppling the Kim regime. Paul Haenle of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing agreed that despite Pyongyang’s singling out of the United States, “the real attention is focused on China” and its response. China is likely to move cautiously, he said, but he did not rule out a tougher line from Beijing. “North Korea’s defiance is not only an untenable burden on China’s image as a credible and strong leader on this issue, but will also lead to an enhanced U.S. security posture in the region and increased cooperation between the U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies — not something Beijing wants,” he said. “I don't think we can overlook the fact that Xi is a new and fundamentally different kind of Chinese leader,” Haenle added, citing Xi’s his historic decision to meet with Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou in November as an example. “While analysts have plenty of evidence to justify their assessments that China won't change course, I think we need to be open to the possibility that China could respond differently this time.” Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, said that the test left China no choice but to back further U.N. sanctions against North Korea. But the Crisis Group’s Xie cautioned that nothing would be done that might upset Beijing’s bottom line. “For Beijing, a nuclear-armed North Korea is uncomfortable and disturbing, but a regime collapse in Pyongyang, leading to mass chaos next door and potentially a united Korean Peninsula with Washington extending its influence northward to China's doorstep is downright frightening,” Xie said. Gu Jinglu and Liu Liu contributed to this report. **Read more:** Air Force deploys radiation sniffer plane after North Korea’s nuclear test China reluctant to join U.S. in punishing North Korea over cyberattacks Kerry pushes China on North Korea nukes Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Stephen Colbert’s ‘Pander Express’ is a brilliant takedown of how Hollywood sucks up to China

Stephen Colbert has promised to follow Hollywood's example in sucking up to China -- a practice that has become a huge moneymaker for American film studios. In an episode of the "Late Show" this week, the host fawned over China's achievements and vowed to get himself some of that "sweet and sour renminbi." Colbert launches his segment by talking about "The Martian," the sci-fi thriller that has been a huge hit so far in the United States. The film took in around $150 million in box office revenues in its first weekend, according to entertainment data company Rentrak.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico And it's expected to rake in far more going forward, says Colbert. People think the film will do particularly well when it is released in China, in part because the Chinese space program plays a key role in the film. Colbert implies that "The Martian" includes a Chinese plot point as a way to crack into the country's huge and lucrative film market. He may be a little off here -- as people who have read the book point out, the book also includes mentions of China, and it seems doubtful that author Andy Weir was thinking about Chinese box office revenues when he wrote it.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Still, the phenomenon that Colbert is talking about -- Hollywood casting the Chinese in a flattering light in order to do better in that box office market -- is definitely real. There are lots of recent Hollywood films that Colbert doesn't mention that are designed to appeal to China, some more subtly than others. In fact, the Chinese government and its support of censorship now has a surprisingly big hand in shaping the movies that Americans make and watch. Films like “Transformers IV,” “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” “Looper,” “Gravity,” "Iron Man 3" and many more appear to have adapted their plots to woo Chinese censors and audiences. The reasons are obvious: There is a ton of money at stake. Global revenue data gathered by research firm Rentrak shows that China is solidly in place as the world's second-biggest box office market, after surpassing Japan in 2012. For the first time, Chinese box office revenues even surpassed those of the U.S. for one weekend in 2014 -- Chinese New Year, one of the busiest times of year for Chinese movie theaters. What’s more, there's still a lot more growth potential in China. Chinese box office revenues rose by almost a third last year to $4.8 billion, even as revenues in the U.S. shrank. In just the first half of 2015, Chinese box office receipts had already reached $3.3 billion, according to state media.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Only a select number of American films are allowed to compete in China. To protect its own film industry and keep censorship controls in place, China caps the number of foreign films that reach theaters to 34 per year \-- creating an environment of tough competition for Hollywood studios. The films that China lets in tend to be the big animated movies, like "Kung Fu Panda" or "Wall-E," or big-budget action films -- relatively safe and simple plot lines that don't require a lot of subtitles, dubbing or cultural understanding for audiences to enjoy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico For Hollywood movies trying to get on this select list, portraying China in a positive light is key. Any foreign film that is shown in theaters in China must be approved by the Film Bureau, part of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which reports to the highest levels of the Chinese government. Aynne Kokas, an assistant professor of media studies at University of Virginia, says Chinese censors reject films with sex, violence, anything that puts the Chinese government in a bad light, and even supernatural content, since the Communist Party has a long tradition of combating superstition. These limitations are actually leading Hollywood to try to provide more family films for China, especially after the huge success of the Kung Fu Panda franchise, says Kokas. “Then you don’t have to say that you’re changing your film substantially with the censors, because the censors wouldn’t have a problem with your film in the first place." Observers have called out some Hollywood studios for making substantial changes to their films in recent years to please Chinese censors. Some of these changes are subtle. The creators of “Iron Man 3,” for example, lengthened some scenes featuring a Chinese doctor and added Fan Bingbing, a famous Chinese actress, to the cast for the film's Chinese version. And for the 2012 film “Looper,” the filmmakers ultimately changed the location of the city of the future from Paris to Shanghai. Others attempts to appeal to China are more blatant -- for example, recent plot changes Sony Pictures Entertainment made to several movies, which were revealed by leaked e-mails now housed on WikiLeaks. One e-mail exchange shows that Sony decided to cut scenes of aliens blasting a hole in the Great Wall of China from the 2015 movie "Pixels" with Adam Sandler, in order to improve the chances that their film would be shown in China. The aliens ended up blasting the Taj Mahal, the Washington Monument and Manhattan, instead.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Leaked Sony e-mails show a similar calculus for 2014 film "RoboCop." "Changing the China elements to another country should be a relatively easy fix," Steven O’Dell, president of Sony Pictures Releasing International, wrote in an exchange about some elements in the film that might anger Beijing's censors.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But the most egregious example of a Hollywood movie pandering to the Chinese government is probably Paramount's brainless 2014 blockbuster "Transformers: Age of Extinction." The film, which one critic describes as director Michael Bay’s "wet kiss" to Beijing, was made as what's called an "officially assisted production," with Paramount working in partnership with Chinese company Jiaflix Enterprise and China's official state broadcaster, CCTV.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Part of the movie's action is set in Hong Kong -- a former British colony that is now officially a special administrative region of China, and the site of recent pro-democracy protests. In the film, a sea captain in Hong Kong appeals to the central government in Beijing for help, and China's defense minister earnestly vows to defend Hong Kong -- what Justin Chang, a critic at Variety, calls “a mainland-pandering scene that the movie dares to put across with a straight face.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico A lot of the changes that Hollywood movies make to increase their appeal in China -- adding a Chinese star, for example -- are totally harmless, and maybe even a helpful dose of cultural exposure for American audiences. But other changes made to please Chinese censors are more questionable. And few Americans seem to realize that the Chinese government, and their strict regulations regarding censorship, are increasingly shaping the movies that Americans create and watch. Bill Bishop, an author and China expert, suggested in a recent e-mail newsletter that these films ought to come with a warning -- "This content has been modified to appease Beijing" -- just as the movies shown on airplanes sometimes carry a disclaimer that certain parts of the films have been removed. "I understand the business imperative, but viewers have a right to know," he says. _Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly described the 1984 movie "Red Dawn" as showing the Chinese invade the U.S. That was the Soviets._    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico You might also like: America’s biggest competitor really isn’t China    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What it looks like when you take revenge on Ikea’s cookie-cutter furniture    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Hillary Clinton’s China visit a balancing act

BEIJING — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived here Tuesday for what may be her last significant visit to China — and a final opportunity to explain and reinforce the Obama administration’s complex approach to the U.S.-Sino relationship. Throughout her tenure, Clinton has been one of the principal forces shaping and carrying out the administration’s sometimes controversial Asia policy. And with the looming presidential election and Clinton’s planned departure afterward, leaders throughout the region have been asking one key question: What happens next? “You hear this everywhere in Asia now, not just about what will come after these guys but whether U.S. presence will persevere and how that presence will be directed,” said Christopher Johnson, a former top China analyst for the CIA who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. When it comes to China, much of the U.S. struggle for the past four years has been with a Goldilocks-type conundrum: how to continue strengthening partnerships with other Asian nations without angering the Chinese or prompting accusations of interference. “It’s a careful balance you’re juggling at all times,” said a former Obama administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. Many countries in the region, uneasy with China’s growing economic and military clout, have clamored for an increased U.S. presence in Asia. U.S. officials have tried hard to project such an increase in the past year with their new policy of “pivoting,” or “rebalancing,” American focus from the Middle East. At the same time, they have tried to convince the Chinese government that the increased presence is not an attempt to contain China’s rise. Those attempts have not entirely been successful, as was made clear in blistering editorials and stories in China’s state-run media ahead of Clinton’s one-night visit. One report claimed that the Chinese people dislike Clinton personally. Another called her “a person who deeply reinforces U.S.-China mutual suspicion.” And a column published by China’s official news agency called the United States a “sneaky troublemaker sitting behind some nations in the region and pulling strings.” Among the thorniest topics Clinton will have to tackle in meetings Wednesday are various territorial disputes that have become flash points between China and its neighbors. On the South China Sea especially, China has been the most aggressive actor, claiming almost the entire disputed area and threatening other claimants diplomatically, economically and militarily. China has insisted that disputes be handled in a series of bilateral negotiations rather than collectively — a one-on-one approach that would give China a hulking advantage. Without naming China outright during an appearance in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Monday, Clinton said that all nations in the region “should work collaboratively together to resolve disputes without coercion, without intimidation, without threats — and certainly without the use of force.” She pledged to bring the issue up during her Beijing visit. That collaborative approach has been a centerpiece of the Asia strategy adopted by the Obama administration, which has worked in recent years to build up a web of Asian alliances. But it remains to be seen whether the effort will pay off long-term. Almost since the beginning of the administration, Obama officials have tried to nurture regional institutions to strengthen the collective backbone of Asian countries affected by China. Early on, the administration identified the Association of Southeast Asian Nations   (ASEAN) as one of the key gatherings through which they could build involvement. In 2010, the United States established its first embassy to ASEAN, in Indonesia. The next year, Obama attended an ASEAN summit, making him the first U.S. president to do so. He has made a point of meeting with the leaders of each country in the association at least once a year. But the most recent ASEAN meeting exposed signs of a serious rift among Southeast Asian countries over how to cope with China’s clout. For the first time since the group was founded in 1967, foreign ministers could not agree on a final communique to end their meeting. The main sticking point: China’s close ally, Cambodia, refusing to allow any mention of the South China Sea issue. The relationship between Japan and South Korea — the United States’ strongest Asian allies — also is showing signs of fraying. U.S. officials had invested much time and diplomatic energy trying to set up a trilateral relationship among the three countries to increase military- and data-sharing, particularly given their concerns about North Korea and China. But a growing territorial feud over a cluster of rocky islands, as well as resurgent historic bitterness, has left South Korea and Japan barely able to talk with each other. The trilateral idea is in shambles. So far, Clinton has spent much of her Asian trip reassuring allies in the region that the U.S. pivot to Asia is substantive and lasting. But now, in China, she faces an equally vexing problem of explaining to Beijing that those U.S. initiatives are benign and not aimed at China. It is a challenge that she has faced for nearly four years and one that her successors are likely to face for years to come.

China is happy with John Kerry because it thinks he’ll drop the ‘pivot to Asia’

John Kerry's first weeks as secretary of state, and even the weeks before he took the job, certainly gave the impression that he would focus on the Middle East-- on restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, on nuclear negotiations with Iran, on the Syrian civil war--and he has. But he so far has not showed much enthusiasm for the Obama administration's first-term "pivot to Asia."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University It's not just Washington foreign policy analysts who've noticed Kerry's pivot back to the Middle East. China appears to have taken note as well. And, judging by Chinese state media, the country is pretty pleased. In the thinking behind the "pivot," U.S. foreign policy would refocus from the endless dramas of the Middle East to Asia and particularly China, making sure that the United States would be a "Pacific power" with lots of influence in a part of the world that's becoming more and more important. Elizabeth Economy, a China-watcher at the Council on Foreign Relations, noticed China's apparent pleasure with Kerry and rounded up some of the state media reactions:    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Kerry himself sort of predicted this when he said of the pivot during his confirmation hearings, "You know, the Chinese take a look at that and say, what’s the United States doing? They trying to circle us? What’s going on?" China has not been happy about the "pivot," which it sees as a hostile effort to contain China's rise. Beijing can be a little paranoid at times about U.S. intentions in East Asia, but it is not totally wrong that the United States wants to build a network of alliances along China's periphery; it already has military bases, after all, in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and soon Australia. The idea that a rising state such as China would compete for influence with the regional power is international relations 101, after all. It's not surprising that the United States would want to preempt East Asian competition with China by exerting its influence in the region now, nor is it surprising that China would be unhappy about it. But the United States and China have a lot of incentives, many of them financial, to keeping their relationship stable. So the United States has a strong incentive to play down the idea that its Asia focus is about containing China. Kerry's balancing act, as he seems to see it, is about how to engage in Asia without unduly upsetting China and damaging the important (and sometimes-tenuous) U.S.-China relationship. It looks like Kerry might be erring a little more on the side of preserving friendly U.S.-China relations than Hillary Clinton did as secretary of state, when she cultivated close ties with Southeast Asian states, often to Beijing's outrage. That doesn't mean that Kerry is giving up on Asia, of course, but it suggests a different set of priorities there, more about maintaining a positive status quo than trying to assert a new dynamic. If a goal of Kerry's pivot-away-from-the-pivot is to improve ties with China, it looks like that plan might already be succeeding. But if it's just about Kerry having more interest in the Middle East, where he has deeper experience, then that could be China's gain.

China’s Xi to get a pomp-heavy U.S. welcome Friday, but maybe not a warm one

President Obama has lavished more personal attention on Chinese President Xi Jinping than on any other world leader over the past several years. But as Xi makes his first state visit to Washington, the romance is all but dead. Observers said there is little personal warmth, and even less trust, between Xi and Obama as the White House prepares to roll out the red carpet with a pomp-filled arrival ceremony Friday. Xi has aggressively sought to expand China’s influence in Asia, and his assertiveness has caught the Obama administration off guard, often making the White House appear indecisive in its responses. Obama aides insist the president’s strategy of engagement over confrontation will pay long-term dividends. They point to a major climate pact with Beijing last year and China’s backing for the U.S.-led nuclear accord with Iran. White House officials said Xi will on Friday announce new plans to enact a cap-and- trade program to curtail carbon emissions starting in 2017, further evidence that Beijing is serious about curbing China’s carbon emissions. If Xi has been more forceful on the world stage, the aides said, he has also provided evidence that China has the potential to be the kind of responsible global partner that the United States has sought. At the same time, escalating tensions have led others to conclude that Xi has gotten the better of Obama, taking advantage of the U.S. president’s impulse for collaboration while Xi furthers his own ambitions to consolidate power in China and assert greater authority abroad. “It’s not possible to deal with this approach without doing things that create risk,” said Aaron Friedberg, a former aide to President George W. Bush on Asian affairs. “China is taking risky actions believing that others will back away fearing confrontation. We’re going to have to take risks as well.” The Obama administration has resisted calls in Washington to impose new economic sanctions on Chinese businesses over the cybertheft of U.S. trade secrets or to dispatch Navy ships into waters recently claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea, a crucial international shipping corridor. Critics, including several Republican presidential candidates, have said Obama’s inaction has emboldened Xi, and foreign policy analysts said Beijing is intent on pushing the boundaries in Obama’s final years in office amid fears that the next U.S. administration will be less friendly toward China. Ruan Zongze, who served as a minister at China’s embassy in Washington from 2007 to 2011, said in a recent interview that calls for a tougher policy toward China are rooted in anxiety among U.S. officials “to prove they’re not in decline.” In China, he said, the view is that U.S. relations with Russia and in the Middle East are “not in desirable shape” and that there is no upside for the Obama administration to pick a fight with Beijing. “China is not challenging American supremacy,” Ruan said. White House officials said Obama will hold off on any punitive actions until after he meets with Xi. In a speech to business leaders in Seattle this week, Xi denied a role by his government in the cybertheft of trade secrets and said he would seek to strengthen cooperation with the United States on the issue. “This summit will be an opportunity for us to hear directly from him what form that takes, and then we’ll be able to make a judgment based on those conversations,” said Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser. At the heart of those conversations is a relationship between leaders who have struggled to develop a personal rapport and enter Friday’s summit on different trajectories. Obama, 54, is in the final stages of his presidency, having steered the United States onto firmer financial footing but still working to realize a foreign policy strategy aimed at lessening the United States’ focus on the Middle East and shifting attention to Asia. Xi, 62, is in the third year of a 10-year term as head of China’s ruling Communist Party, a leader who has ambitions to return China to a central role in Asian affairs but has struggled to enact changes to modernize its economy. In Xi, who assumed power in 2013, the White House saw a figure who was more dynamic than his predecessors, including Hu Jintao, with whom Obama had made little headway in his first term. Obama advisers viewed Xi, who had lived in the United States, as a potential reformer who would make China willing to shoulder more responsibility to solve global challenges, and the White House was determined to enlist Xi as an ally even before he became president. In November 2011, Obama held an unorthodox introductory meeting with Xi, then China’s vice president, on the sidelines of a regional security summit in Bali. Three months later, Xi arrived for a cross-country U.S. tour, hosted by Vice President Biden, with stops in Iowa and California as well as Washington, D.C. “I’m glad you will get an opportunity to get out of Washington . . . maybe even taking in a Lakers game,” Obama told Xi in the Oval Office during that visit. “I look forward to a future of improved dialogue and increased cooperation.” When Xi became president, Obama invited him in June 2013 for a two-day summit at the Sunnylands estate in Southern California, a lush retreat favored by Ronald Reagan. At a working dinner, each man laid out his domestic agenda and the political challenges he faced at home — the better to understand how each other’s foreign policy aims might be affected by domestic concerns. Rhodes said that because the United States and China have such a long bilateral agenda, the two sides are forced to plow through issues in face-to-face talks that get consumed by talking points. The White House has sought to engage Xi in separate, more intimate settings to develop more rapport through franker exchanges. Obama and Xi met for a private dinner Thursday night, ahead of the formal summit meetings and state dinner Friday. Obama told his aides that “the most constructive engagements were when they were able to talk for several hours over dinner without a formal agenda,” Rhodes said. During those talks, Rhodes added, the two leaders would typically “give a vision for where they want to take their country, give a vision for how they think the U.S. and China should operate together in the world, and kind of put aside the talking points and actually get a window into one another’s worldview. And those worldviews are very different.” White House aides credit the Sunnylands session with helping lay the groundwork for a landmark deal, announced during Obama’s visit to Beijing last year, to reduce China’s greenhouse gases by 2030. But in other areas, Xi has repeatedly challenged the White House. At Sunnylands, they spent a significant amount of time discussing U.S. concerns over China’s hacking of American businesses, but the cybertheft problem has gotten significantly worse. In 2013, China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone around a set of contested islands in the East China Sea that had long been administered by Japan. Though Obama announced during a visit to Tokyo in 2014 that the United States would defend its treaty ally, China has since moved aggressively to expand its control in another major maritime thoroughfare on the South China Sea. And on economics, Xi has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a regional initiative backed by U.S. allies, including Germany and Britain, even as the Obama administration seeks to complete an expansive 12-nation Asia-Pacific trade pact that excludes China. “Xi had some big ideas for this relationship, and he has tried to test American resolve,” said Minxin Pei, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund. “The United States has begun to respond firmly, but it could have been a lot more vigorous countering Chinese moves.” White House officials say China’s recent economic woes, including a sharp drop in its stock market, have put Xi on the defensive to show his countrymen that he can maintain the breakneck economic growth that has propelled China’s rise over the past two decades. The question is whether Xi’s weakened position will make him more or less averse to compromise with Obama. “We reject reductive reasoning and lazy rhetoric that says conflict between the U.S. and China is inevitable, even as we’ve been tough with China where we disagree,” Susan E. Rice, the White House national security adviser, said in a speech Monday. “This isn’t a zero-sum game.”

The shadow over Obama’s Asia trip: 3 ways China scares the U.S.

President Obama's ongoing tour through four Asian countries is a sign, we're told, of Washington's renewed effort to "pivot" or "rebalance" toward Asia. Far from conflict hot spots in the Middle East and now Eastern Europe, the Asia-Pacific is home to some of the world's most dynamic, exciting economies. As Obama's former national security adviser Tom Donilon wrote this week in The Washington Post, the administration is keen to move beyond the wars and occupations that "dominated U.S. national security policy and resources for the past decade" in favor of "a shift toward the region that presents the most significant opportunity for the United States."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University But Asia is hardly a space free of contest. Obama's swing through Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines — four democracies with warm ties to the U.S. — is a visit to allies who are, to varying degrees, wary of the rise of budding superpower China. Though U.S. officials repeatedly disavow claims that the U.S. seeks to "contain" China, Beijing appears to believe it and so do many scholarly observers. Here are three ways the specter of China looms large during Obama's Asia trip.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Balance of power in the Pacific** : For decades, a Pax Americana, underpinned by U.S. naval supremacy, has authored the status quo in Asia. American military dominance is still a fact, but China's aggressive military expansion over the past two decades — its defense budget grew more than 12 percent this year alone — calls into question the long-term balance of power. Last year, China commissioned 17 new warships, more than any other nation. It aims to have four aircraft carriers by 2020 and has developed a considerable fleet of nuclear submarines. In the next few decades, China's ability to project naval power will extend deep into the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. (The Obama administration, in a thinly-veiled response, has committed to an expanded military presence in Australia and will work on a new security deal with the Philippines when in Manila next week.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University China's build-up comes alongside an increasing number of diplomatic spats between China and its neighbors over disputed territories, particularly islands in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Tensions with the nationalist government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the Senkaku islands, known by the Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands, have flared dangerously in the past year, with Japanese and Chinese aircraft and vessels engaging in dangerously provocative maneuvers.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Calming Asia's troubled waters is no easy task, especially for an administration that wants to buttress traditional allies but remains fearful of antagonizing Beijing. Obama's mixed messaging in Tokyo was evidence of the awkward diplomatic tight rope he has to walk.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **China’s global footprint** : China is changing the game away from Asia as well. This year, China eclipsed the U.S. for the first time as the world’s largest trading nation. The map below, compiled by the Chinese Relations blog, shows the extent to which China has become the biggest trading partner of many countries in the developing world, particularly in Africa. (Note: It discounts the European Union as a single trading bloc for illustrative effect.)    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Beyond trade, China is pouring billions of dollars into megaprojects around the world. Its state companies are building and investing in roads, mines, stadiums and dams from Papua New Guinea to Peru. The growing scope of China Inc. — driven largely by China's insatiable appetite for natural resources — raises thorny questions about the future of global politics. Is Chinese influence in developing countries harmful for democracy? How does Washington deal with its declining clout in Latin America? Should we be concerned about a new form of Chinese neo-imperialism? The Obama administration's desire to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, a massive free trade pact that would knit together a host of countries around the Pacific, is in part aimed at reasserting American influence in a part of the world where it was once the unquestioned hegemon.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University **Friendship with Russia** : It's no secret U.S.-Russia relations are in a bad place, with the West struggling to deal with Moscow's power play in Ukraine. Sanctions on Russian officials have been imposed and new rounds threatened as the Ukraine crisis worsens. But China, Russia's frequent collaborator on the U.N. Security Council, presents Russia with something of an escape. Recent reports suggest that the two countries may be close on a long-mooted natural gas deal worth billions of dollars. It's a deal that makes sense, especially if Russia wants to thumb its nose at Europe — currently the chief importer of Russian natural gas.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Russia and China are finding more reasons to deepen their political and economic ties, expanding trade and military links. For American strategists, they present a troubling axis of illiberal, authoritarian states that has already stymied U.S. objectives over a host of issues at the U.N., including the drive for tough action on Syria. At the same time, the U.S.'s democratic allies in Asia are finding more reasons to bicker — Abe's nationalist government in Japan has riled South Korea — while India and the grouping of Southeast Asian nations, ASEAN, show little to no inclination to help the U.S. hedge against China. The American "pivot" to Asia may be an escape from quagmires further west, but it comes with no shortage of headaches of its own.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Xi Jinping’s visit offers U.S., China a chance to show a little restraint

_Kenneth Lieberthal is director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. J. Stapleton Roy is director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center._ Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit this week is an opportunity for the man who is likely to lead China from late 2012 to late 2022 to begin to develop the agenda for that decade with a president who may well serve until January 2017. Yet this visit comes at a time of growing strategic distrust between China and the United States. China, despite some problems, remains on a roll. Its economy has rapidly expanded to second-largest in the world, with gross domestic product continuing to advance annually in the high single digits. Its military budget has grown 10-plus percent a year for more than a decade, growth that is likely to continue for years. Meanwhile, U.S. economic confidence and outcomes remain afflicted by the 2008-09 financial crisis, and our military is wrestling with budget cuts as we address our fiscal deficit. The United States is far stronger and wealthier than China and will remain so for years. But the balance of resources and capabilities is shifting. Nowhere is that felt more acutely than in Asia, where visions of the future cast a long shadow over current perceptions around the region. As President Obama has stressed, Asia is the most vital region for sustained U.S. prosperity. Beijing sees itself again becoming the central player in Asia and strong enough to expect that Washington will no longer treat its core concerns with what it views as a bullying, dismissive attitude. China increasingly wants to control military activities in the waters off its coast. Dependent on imports for vital energy resources, China is pressing its territorial claims in potentially energy-rich maritime areas in the East and South China Seas. China, arguably the world’s second most powerful country, is rankled by U.S. diplomacy that it sees as emboldening people in Taiwan, Tibet and the huge, northwestern region of Xinjiang to defy Beijing. The United States has long been a Pacific power with formal alliances and strategic ties throughout the region. Tradition and vital interests come together in America’s determination to protect its leadership role in Asia, backed up by extensive economic ties and a military that can operate freely in international waters there. Obama vowed during a trip to Asia in November to maintain America’s leadership role and to protect defense capabilities there from budgetary pressures on overall military expenditures. While both Washington and Beijing consider good bilateral relations vital, their growing strategic rivalry could evolve into mutual antagonism. With a U.S. presidential election and a major leadership succession in China happening in 2012, both sides are looking primarily to prevent a souring in relations this year. That is understandable but insufficient. Neither country will be able to lessen strategic mistrust unless it addresses a central question: What array of military deployments and normal operations would permit China to defend its core security interests while allowing America to continue to fully meet its obligations to allies in the region? The answer will not be comfortable for either side: China’s military is developing capabilities to force changes in U.S. platforms and plans, and Beijing cannot realistically hope to achieve the capacity to dominate the surrounding seas out to the outer limits of the East China Sea against determined U.S. efforts to prevent that domination. So far, each side is developing doctrines that are little understood by the other: China has adopted a strategy of being able to defend its interests in “nearby seas,” while the Pentagon has articulated a goal of maintaining the capability to overcome any “anti-access/area denial.” Threat perceptions on both sides are assuming a life of their own. The specifics and operational assumptions behind each doctrine are opaque, but each is increasingly couched in terms that can justify escalating military expenditures as both militaries attempt to achieve levels of certainty that are, so far, unattainable. This trend cries out for top political leaders to step in and, along with their militaries, discuss principles and accommodations that give each side reasonable certainty about its core security interests. They should try to reach a set of understandings that include steps embodying mutual restraint on development and deployments of particularly destabilizing weapons systems. To improve trust, such discussions need to probe each side’s goals and expectations on such sensitive issues as the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. Xi Jinping’s visit will not immediately produce major steps toward such mutual understanding. But it is not too early to begin addressing the core issue of mutually agreed overall security postures in Asia. The forces driving the escalation of tensions and costs, with the likely result of diminished security for all, are in play. The topic will take years to work out. Efforts to bring this under greater control by the leadership in both nations should begin this week. **More on this debate from PostOpinions:** Robert J. Samuelson: Is a Chinese economic slump on the horizon? Matt Miller: The decadence of the West Post’s view: U.S. foreign policy turns toward Asia

Trump prepares to pass the world leadership baton to China

We do not yet have the official agenda for next month’s meeting in Florida between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But after 75 years of U.S. leadership on the world stage, the Mar-a-Lago summit might mark the beginning of a handover of power from the United States to China. Trump has embraced a policy of retreat from the world, opening a space that will be eagerly filled by the Communist Party of China. Trump railed against China on the campaign trail, bellowing that it was “raping” the United States. He vowed to label it a currency manipulator on his first day in office. But in his first interaction with Beijing, he caved. Weeks after his election, Trump speculated that he might upgrade relations with Taiwan. In response, Xi froze all contacts between Beijing and Washington on all issues, demanding that Trump reverse himself — which is exactly what happened. (Perhaps just coincidentally, a few weeks later, the Chinese government granted the Trump Organization dozens of trademark rights in China, with a speed and on a scale that surprised many experts.) The Trump administration’s vision for disengagement from the world is a godsend for China. Look at Trump’s proposed budget, which would cut spending on “soft power” — diplomacy, foreign aid, international organizations — by 28 percent. Beijing, by contrast, has quadrupled the budget of its foreign ministry in the past decade. And that doesn’t include its massive spending on aid and development across Asia and Africa. Just tallying some of Beijing’s key development commitments, George Washington University’s David Shambaugh estimates the total at $1.4 trillion, compared with the Marshall Plan, which in today’s dollars would cost about $100 billion. China’s growing diplomatic strength matters. An Asian head of government recently told me that at every regional conference, “Washington sends a couple of diplomats, whereas Beijing sends dozens. The Chinese are there at every committee meeting, and you are not.” The result, he said, is that Beijing is increasingly setting the Asian agenda. The Trump administration wants to skimp on U.S. funding for the United Nations. This is music to Chinese ears. Beijing has been trying to gain influence in the global body for years. It has increased its funding for the U.N. across the board and would likely be delighted to pick up the slack as the United States withdraws. As Foreign Policy magazine’s Colum Lynch observes, China has already become the second-largest funder of U.N. peacekeeping and has more peacekeepers than the other four permanent Security Council members combined. Of course, in return for this, China will gain increased influence, from key appointments to shifts in policy throughout the U.N. system. The first major act of the Trump administration was to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a treaty that would have opened up long- closed economies such as Japan and Vietnam, but also would have created a bloc that could stand up to China’s increasing domination of trade in Asia. The TPP was, in Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s words, “a litmus test” of U.S. credibility in Asia. With Washington’s withdrawal, even staunchly pro- American allies such as Australia are hedging their bets. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has raised the possibility of China joining the TPP, essentially turning a group that was meant to be a deterrent against China into one more arm of Chinese influence. The United States’ global role has always meant being at the cutting edge in science, education and culture. Here again, Washington is scaling back while Beijing is ramping up. In Trump’s proposed budget, the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the national laboratories face crippling cuts, as do many exchange programs that have brought generations of young leaders to be trained in the United States and exposed to American values. Beijing, meanwhile, has continued to expand “Confucius Institutes” around the world and now offers 20,000 scholarships for foreign students to go to China. Its funding for big science rises every year. The world’s largest telescope is in China, not the United States. The Trump administration does want a bigger military. But that has never been how China has sought to compete with U.S. power. Chinese leaders have pointed out to me that this was the Soviet strategy during the Cold War, one that failed miserably. The implication was: Let Washington waste resources on the Pentagon, while Beijing would focus on economics, technology and soft power. Trump’s new national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, once remarked that trying to fight the United States symmetrically — tank for tank — was “stupid.” The smart strategy would be an asymmetrical one. The Chinese seem to understand this. _Read more fromFareed Zakaria’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more on this issue:** Fred Hiatt: Trump could transform America’s relationship with China. Here’s how. The Post’s View: Here’s how Trump could open doors to a new China policy Catherine Rampell: Trump is working hard to Make China Great Again Julian Gewirtz: Stop writing China off as an enemy. Millennials don’t. Josh Rogin: Trump could make Obama’s pivot to Asia a reality

Obama warns China about using secret agents to track down fugitives in U.S.

The Obama administration has warned China about the use of undercover operatives in the United States who are assigned to pressure Chinese fugitives to return home and in some cases to recover assets gained through alleged corruption, U.S. officials said. The warning was delivered in the past several weeks through diplomatic channels. As described by officials, it was a matter of informing China that the United States is aware of the operation, which Chinese media accounts have alluded to, and voicing the administration’s concerns rather than threatening any specific retaliatory action. The warning was issued in the past several weeks through diplomatic channels, officials said, confirming an account that appeared Sunday evening on the New York Times Web site. The administration has reminded the Chinese government, with which the United States has no extradition treaty, that any attempt to repatriate alleged fugitives should be conducted through proper U.S. legal channels. China’s foreign ministry has not yet responded to a faxed request for comment on the issue. In a commentary published Monday, Xinhua, a state-controlled newswire, called the Times report “astonishing” and “inexplicable” because the U.S. side “promised not only once to strengthen anti-corruption cooperation with China.” “On one hand, [the U.S.] showed a cooperative attitude, on the other they issued a warning,” it read. “Chinese people can’t help but wonder if the U.S. is on the side of corrupt officials, or on the side of justice,” the Xinhua commentary said. The Times reported that young Chinese agents, operating undercover, have been dispatched to a number of countries to induce the alleged fugitives to return to China, sometimes with threats against relatives at home. In December, the newspaper reported, Australia officially complained to the Beijing government after two Chinese agents arrived in Melbourne, without informing Australian authorities, to apprehend a Chinese national accused of bribery. Although the Justice Department has charged Chinese government entities with alleged cybertheft from U.S. companies, the administration has been reluctant to publicly challenge China over alleged illegal activity toward U.S. government entities, including a massive breach of U.S. government personnel records earlier this year that many in U.S. intelligence are convinced was a Chinese operation. Officials have cited factors including concern that proving such allegations would require revealing U.S. intelligence sources and methods.

Ahead of Beijing visit, Defense Secretary Hagel admonishes China

TOKYO — On the eve of his first visit to China as defense secretary, Chuck Hagel paid Beijing a compliment laden with tough love. “China is a great power,” Hagel said Sunday, speaking alongside his counterpart from Japan, the U.S. ally in the region that may have the most at stake in China’s military buildup. “And with this power comes new and wider responsibilities as to how you use that power.” The Obama administration has sought at times to play down the extent to which its strategy to augment military and diplomatic outreach in the Asia-Pacific region is meant to counterbalance China’s military rise. But on Sunday morning, speaking at the Japanese Defense Ministry, Hagel was uncharacteristically sharp when asked what messages he would convey to Chinese officials. “Coercion and intimidation is a deadly thing,” Hagel said, in an apparent reference to Chinese territorial claims that have rankled neighbors, most significantly Japan. “You cannot go around the world and redefine boundaries and violate territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or intimidation, whether it’s small islands in the Pacific or large nations in Europe.” Hagel has traveled to Asia four times since he took the helm of the Pentagon a year ago, but this trip will mark his first visit as a Cabinet member to China, a country with which United States has struggled to build a collaborative military relationship. Hagel said he intends to encourage Chinese officials to be more candid about their goals and strategies. “The more transparent and open governments can be with each other, the better for everyone,” Hagel said. Chinese officials have been critical of the Obama administration’s “rebalancing” strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, seeing it as an affront to their aspirations. Washington and Beijing have traded accusations of cyber-espionage as both capitals seek to dominate the increasingly fraught battleground of cyberspace. China’s increasingly assertive behavior is only one of Washington’s worries in the region. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is another. Seeking in part to appease wary officials in Japan, which is in North Korea’s range of fire, Hagel announced Sunday that the United States would deploy two additional ballistic missile defense destroyers to Japan by 2017. The new ships will bring to seven the number of Japan-based U.S. ships capable of interdicting ballistic missiles. “This move to significantly bolster our naval presence is another action that strengthens our alliance and increases deterrence against North Korean aggression,” Hagel said. The announcement comes amid a new spike in tension between North and South Korea, which last week exchanged artillery fire near their disputed maritime boundary.

Why Washington should be engaging with China

The most important economic story today and in the foreseeable future is not the Dow, tomorrow’s jobs report or rising income equality. It is China’s economic policies and their implication for our own. As reported in the New York Times, China’s state-sponsored capitalism is moving aggressively to grow its economy. It starts with a massive and growing pool of capita enabled, in part, by the fact that the savings of Chinese citizens receive a negative return. The Chinese state then deploys capital in a number of highly strategic areas, including energy and other natural resources. China is also notorious for its pursuit of Western technology through hacking and the placement of Chinese nationals in U.S. corporations where they can essentially steal the technology and send it back home. Then, armed with stolen knowledge, they build products which they then sell to the world below the cost of production, gaining dominant market share. The impotence of the U.S. response to the China challenge, so far, was perhaps best summarized this week by the report that China, not the United States, is reaping the benefit of Iraq’s oil.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The United States seems ill-equipped to respond coherently to the rise of China. Our brand of capitalism, which champions free markets and individual reward, is threatened by China’s subsuming the individual for the sake of the perceived national interest. We play by a set of trade and intellectual property rules that China ignores; perhaps they use the history of Western exploitation of China as an excuse for this flagrancy. And our national priorities are still too skewed to projecting an international footprint of military power; we spend trillions on defense and neglect other vital areas of national interest, like infrastructure. You know who is guarding those oil pumps in Iraq as China buys the oil? The U.S. military.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Some — David Brooks, among them — have argued that China’s economic upside is limited by its lack of entrepreneurial panache. China, Brooks says, doesn’t sell the kind of sexy, stylish brands that world consumers crave. That may be true today, but China is at the first stage of economic development: the basics of energy, technology and education. And they are accumulating these assets much faster than the West did in its formative years of ascendance. What will stop them from figuring out how to make China cool to a consumer culture? That may be harder to steal, but it isn’t hard to buy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Others point out that China faces its own tricky internal tensions that may slow its economic rise: How long, for example, will its rising middle class accept the restrictions the state puts on individual economic freedom? But neither of these arguments is a strategy; they are a little more than wishes. For many centuries the Chinese regarded the West with arrogant passivity; China was the center of the universe. (Its critics scoffed when the first map of the world failed to account for this geography.) For much of history, China was vastly more advanced than the West and thus failed to take the rise of the West seriously. By the late 19th century, China’s government was weak, besieged by internal dissidents and foreign enemies. It made a series of concessions to imperialist Western governments that furthered weakened it and led to revolution. The parallels here may be a stretch, but Washington today too often seems to regard Beijing with bemused arrogance and passivity. Our leaders either cannot truly imagine that China will displace our global economic leadership, or are at a loss on how to engage with China constructively. China itself serves as a useful model on what happens to nations that fail to deal creatively with existential threats.

Can the U.S. widen the gap between China and North Korea?

In mid-March, when the United States first announced that it would dramatically expand missile defense batteries in Alaska and California, the explanation puzzled a number of analysts. According to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the $1 billion program would be a defense against North Korea, although the country's rogue missile program has no demonstrated capability to reach anywhere near the United States, much less land with real accuracy.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Analysts, accustomed to guessing over Pyongyang's intentions and capabilities, were left guessing about Washington. Pentagon-watchers smelled another overpriced, underperforming boondoggle. North Korea analysts scoffed at an American overreaction. Some wondered if Hagel might be using North Korea's recent provocations as a polite excuse for a defense program that was actually aimed at China's growing power – something that Beijing itself seems to suspect.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Whatever the original purpose, Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to find a new use for the not-always-successful missile defense batteries during his recent visit to Beijing, where he offered to cut back U.S. missile defense in the Pacific if North Korea abandoned its nuclear program.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Kerry's offer is probably not going to change Pyongyang's nuclear calculus any more than past U.S. efforts have. Still, it's a particularly creative approach, and maybe one with a slightly higher degree of success than normal, for two reasons. First, the offer likely appeals more to China than it does to North Korea. Pyongyang loves to threaten the United States but has no real interest in striking American soil, which could lead to the Kim regime's destruction; California missile defense, then, probably doesn't bother North Korea so much. Beijing, however, seems to see the batteries as part of a larger U.S. effort to encircle and isolate China. So Kerry's offer may give China a stronger incentive to pressure their North Korean ally to curb its nuclear program. That gets to the second reason this could be a canny plan. The United States has few real sticks to use to deter North Korea, so it has to rely on giving the nation concessions in exchange for (usually short-lived) good behavior. It's a familiar and distasteful pattern: North Korea does something provocative, the United States and other countries offer food aid or some other goody to calm it down. But China, an important if increasingly impatient sponsor of the North Korean regime, has lots of ways to punish Pyongyang -- for example, by withholding assistance or tamping down on cross-border trade. So, by offering to withdraw some missile defense if North Korea rolls back its nuclear program, Kerry has given China a good reason to do what the United States can't really do on its own: penalize North Korea for its bad behavior. There's no guarantee that China will follow through on this, as it still appears to believe that supporting North Korea is its least bad option. And it's difficult to imagine that even a severe Chinese punishment could drastically change North Korea's calculus. After all, Pyongyang did not open up to the world even after Russia's early-'90s decision to withdraw aid led to a famine that killed thousands, perhaps millions, of North Koreans. If nothing else, Kerry's missile defense gambit is an attempt to turn the tables on North Korea, to reverse the usual dynamic in which North Korea threatens the world until the world rewards it for quieting down. Maybe, just maybe, the United States has finally found something that will effectively pressure a Pyongyang regime that has long seemed immune to American coercion.

China rails at ‘hegemony’ as U.S. vows to continue sea patrols

BEIJING – China criticized U.S. “hegemony and hypocrisy” on Tuesday after a top U.S. admiral vowed to continue naval patrols in the South China Sea. On a visit to China, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris Jr., defended last week’s decision to sail a U.S. naval destroyer close to a Chinese-occupied island in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, and reiterated that such patrols would continue — despite Beijing’s intense displeasure. Harris, speaking at the Stanford Center at Peking University, tried to play down the dispute by stressing deepening cooperation between the two nation’s militaries, including joint participation in regional military exercises and a coordinated naval search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 last year. “Some pundits predict a coming clash between our nations. I do not ascribe to this pessimistic view,” he said. “While we certainly disagree on some topics — the most public being China’s claims in the South China Sea and our activities there — there are many areas where we have common ground.” The United States and its regional allies have become increasingly concerned about China’s efforts to build artificial islands on rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, and to construct airstrips and surveillance equipment on those islands. In April, Harris said China was building a “Great Wall of Sand” there. Last week’s action by the USS Lassen was designed to show that the United States would not tolerate any interference with freedom of navigation in nearby waters. Harris said Monday he continues to have “personal and candid conversations” with Chinese military leaders about tension in the South China Sea. He also described China’s claims to almost all of the South China, encompassed by its “nine-dash line,” as both “ambiguous” and a challenge to the “rules-based international order.” But he tried to characterize last week’s mission by the U.S. destroyer as routine. “Our military will continue to fly, sail and operate whenever and wherever international law allows. The South China Sea is not — and will not — be an exception,” he said. “I truly believe that these routine operations should never be construed as a threat to any nation.” A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, said the Lassen had also sailed past four islets or reefs held by Vietnam or the Philippines last week before it went past the Chinese-held Subi reef. However, the attempt by Harris to defend U.S. actions met a fierce rebuttal from China, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying accusing the United States of “plain provocation." With 100,000 ships passing through the South China Sea safely every year, it was a “false proposition” to argue freedom of navigation was threatened, she said. The United States has been strengthening its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and holding frequent military exercises with China’s rivals, while hyping the threat from China, Hua told a daily news conference. Craig Whitlock in Washington contributed to this report. **Read more:** U.S. Navy alarmed at Beijing’s ‘Great Wall of sand’ in South China Sea China says U.S. destroyer sailing close to Chinese-built island a threat to peace For some Filipino fishermen, the South China Sea dispute is personal

China deletes online reports that it is building a second aircraft carrier

BEIJING — News that China is building a second aircraft carrier was leaked by an overenthusiastic local government, but reports were subsequently deleted from Web sites and social media here, a development that will do little to calm nerves in neighboring countries about Beijing’s growing maritime power. The government in Changzhou, in eastern Jiangsu province, boasted Sunday on social media that a local firm had won a contract to supply electrical cabling for the carrier. It later deleted the post, but not before it had been widely circulated. A report in a local newspaper was also withdrawn. Although China has made no secret of its desire to expand its navy and add to its sole aircraft carrier, the news is a reminder of Beijing’s growing military might and the assertive way it has gone about staking its territorial claims in the East and South China seas in recent years. In December, a U.S. congressional commission predicted that the Chinese navy would have more military vessels than its American counterpart, warning that “the balance of power and presence” in Asia was shifting in China’s direction. Although China’s military capabilities lag far behind those of the United States, its defense spending is growing by double-digit percentages annually. Last week, the country’s Defense Ministry spokesman, Col. Yang Yujun, said that military training this year would focus on improving China’s capability to win “local wars.” An opinion piece in the nationalist Global Times newspaper noted that China, the world’s second-largest economy, trails not only developed countries but also India when it comes to aircraft carriers. While India has two carriers in operation and one under construction, China has just one — a training ship rebuilt from an old Soviet carrier — wrote the author, Sun Xiaobo, saying that the solitary vessel was “no match to the country’s economic strength.” “China is entitled to build more aircraft carriers,” he wrote. “In recent years, China has faced Western-backed provocations from neighboring countries over disputes in the East and South China seas, which entails a stronger military deterrence to safeguard its national security.” China says Japan and the Philippines in particular are being encouraged by the United States to take more assertive stances in their territorial disputes with Beijing. Last year, the Communist Party secretary of Liaoning province was reported to have said that construction of a second carrier had already begun in the shipyard in Dalian, where the first carrier is based, adding that work would be completed by 2020. The China Digital Times, an organization monitoring online censorship here, said that authorities had ordered all reports of his remarks to be deleted. The purchase of China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, involved a considerable element of subterfuge. A Hong Kong-based businessman and former People’s Liberation Army basketball star, Xu Zengping, bought the ship from Ukraine in 1999 claiming he planned to turn it into a floating casino in Macau. Instead he gave it to Chinese authorities, who refurbished it and eventually put it into service in 2012. China had been reluctant to purchase the ship in the 1990s because it was trying to repair its international image after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre; instead, naval officials approached Xu to buy it on their behalf, the South China Morning Post reported. But, in an interview published last month, Xu told the paper that China had never repaid him any of the $120 million the ship ended up costing him. Liu Liu contributed to this report.

Obama wants to strike ‘appropriate balance’ on Chinese dissident

A senior White House official said Sunday that President Obama wants to strike an “appropriate balance” in dealing with a Chinese dissident who fled house arrest last week and reportedly is under protection in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Comments by John O. Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, were the closest the administration has come to confirming the whereabouts of dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng and the difficulty the situation poses for U.S. policymakers. The president tries to “balance our commitment to human rights” with continuing “to carry out our relationships with key countries overseas,” Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re going to make sure that we do this in the appropriate way and that appropriate balance is struck.” Obama “has faced similar situations in the past in terms of this balancing requirement,” Brennan said, and he “will do whatever he thinks is in the best interest of the United States as well as the individuals involved.” Both the U.S. and Chinese governments have studiously avoided confirming Chen’s whereabouts, adhering to uniform “no information” comments. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said in a statement Sunday that he hopes the United States “will take every measure to ensure that Chen and his family members are protected from further persecution.” He said U.S. policy toward China must address human rights violations. “Our country must play a strong role in urging reform in China and supporting those fighting for the freedoms we enjoy,” he said. The incident comes at a particularly dicey time for U.S.-China relations, on the heels of the appearance of a senior Chinese law enforcement official at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu with information that brought down a senior Communist Party boss, and on the eve of this week’s visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner for high-level talks. Kurt Campbell, the State Department’s top diplomat for East Asia, appeared Sunday in Beijing on an unannounced trip, apparently to deal with the Chen situation in advance of Clinton’s arrival. The State Department declined even to confirm Campbell’s presence in the Chinese capital, although he was photographed at a Beijing hotel early Sunday. Brennan made the rounds of three Sunday talk shows to mark the first anniversary of the U.S. Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Although the administration had indicated that U.S. security was on heightened vigilance against a terrorist attack to mark the date, Brennan said on ABC’s “This Week”: “At this time, we don’t see any active plot that is underway.” Bin Laden’s death “made a tremendous difference,” he said. “It’s taken away the founding leader of that organization who was . . . a symbol of al-Qaeda’s sort of murderous agenda worldwide.” Although that and numerous other gains have been made against the organization, he said, “I don’t look at it as a victory. I think . . . we have to destroy the organization. We have to take all of their operatives, their leaders, their training camps, take away their safe havens. And we’re not going to rest.” Hosts on ABC, Fox and CNN’s “State of the Union” tried to get Brennan to respond to an Obama campaign video suggesting that bin Laden might be alive today had Romney been president. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Romney backer, called the ad “a shameless end-zone dance to help [Obama] get reelected.” Brennan repeatedly refused the bait. “I don’t do politics,” he told ABC. “I don’t do the campaign. I am not a Democrat or Republican. I’m a counterterrorism adviser to the president. All I know is that the president made the decision when he was given the opportunity to take a gutsy decision. . . . We’re safer today as a result.”

India is going to Mars! But don’t call it a space race.

Next week, India is set to launch a probe bound for Mars. It's a big moment for a country that has spent the last 50 years quietly tinkering away on space research while NASA and the European Space Agency have gotten all the glory. And it's a thumb in the eye of China, whose own Mars ambitions came apart in 2011 when technical issues forced Beijing to abandon its launch. But even though India might benefit from beating China to the red planet, experts who appeared at a recent event by the Atlantic Council say gaining an edge back on Earth is the last thing scientists at ISRO, India's space agency, have on their minds. Unlike the space race of the Cold War, where getting to the moon first held important geopolitical ramifications, India's interest in space — much like China's — is very closely tied to its economic goals. "To think that India's going to the moon and Mars because of some cynical ploy to engage in one-upsmanship with the Chinese is wrong," says John Sheldon, a national security analyst and founder of The Torridon Group, a strategy firm. India's space program might be obscure to most, but millions of Indians are beneficiaries of it. Not in the American sense that it's produced fun inventions like Tang and Velcro, says Dean Cheng, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation. Instead, the country realized early on that satellites would enable health officials to practice medicine remotely, reaching inaccessible parts of the country. The same was true for remote education. ISRO's major focus, in other words, has been to use space research as a way to overcome the country's (still) steep economic obstacles. "For every rupee invested," Sheldon adds, "there is a return for regular Indian people in terms of what that program provides." Space exploration is a little bit different; it doesn't provide same direct economic benefits as building new imaging technologies or figuring out how to put something into geosynchronous orbit over Earth. Still, the tie-in to development is plainly clear: Countries that venture into outer space become part of an exclusive scientific club. Membership means being taken seriously in international circles. And that might be just as important for India's future as figuring out how to feed, shelter and clothe the next few hundred million people who'll be born there by 2050.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Even though politics might influence budgetary decisions about space policy, says Cheng, competition isn't a driving factor. "When we look at top-tier Asian space powers," he says, "Japan, India, China — all of these countries went into space for their own reasons. They did not go into space because somebody else went into space. ... Space is the dreadnought of the 21st century, or the automobile. You cannot make a claim about having moved beyond mid-level status unless you have a real space program." And today, that means sending a mission to Mars.

China’s international efforts to silence free speech

THE CHINESE government has sent covert law enforcement agents to the United States to intimidate expatriates into returning to China, the New York Times recently reported. The effort — called Operation Fox Hunt — is part of an anti-corruption crusade targeting those who have supposedly committed crimes in China. But China’s reach is not limited to corruption cases. The Communist government also works to project its repressive policies and abuse of human rights beyond its borders, with repeated threats to cancel passports, withhold visas and even jail family members of former and current Chinese citizens who criticize the country from foreign ground. The Chinese government exerts its influence overseas in many ways. Academics must tread lightly when speaking or writing about the country if they want visas for research. News organizations may lose access or advertising revenue if their reports displease authorities. In Britain last month, employees of the Chinese Embassy tried to persuade a hot air balloon festival to ban a balloon bearing the Tibetan flag. More insidious, however, are the government’s efforts to control Chinese people outside of China. For example, Uighur journalist and U.S. citizen Shohret Hoshur has shed light in his reporting for Radio Free Asia on the conflict between ethnic Han Chinese and Uighurs in his home province of Xinjiang. Mr. Hoshur’s family has received threats for years. Now, one of his brothers is in prison, and two others have been jailed and are awaiting trial on charges of leaking state secrets. There’s also Anastasia Lin, a Chinese-born Canadian actor who was crowned Miss World Canada in May. Ms. Lin, who wrote of her situation in a Post op-ed, was a vocal human rights advocate in the pageant. After her victory, Ms. Lin’s father in Hunan province told her she had to stop speaking ill of the Chinese government or stop speaking to him — the police had threatened him. Ms. Lin has not backed down; so far she has not secured a visa to compete in the Miss World championships in Sanya, China. We’d like to think other contestants would stay away, too, if all aren’t admitted, but we’re not holding our breath. Mr. Hoshur and Ms. Lin are not alone: Many more advocates, journalists and dissidents in the United States and elsewhere take a risk or put their relatives in danger every time they speak out against Chinese policies. Their host nations should condemn not just secret operations such as Fox Hunt but also all Chinese efforts to squelch free speech abroad as they seek to do domestically. When repression in authoritarian regimes finds its way to freer societies, it is up to the free countries to do something about it. **Read more on this topic:** The Post’s View: China’s new crackdown on civil rights The Post’s View: China’s irrepressible lawyers Anastasia Lin: I won Miss World Canada. But my work puts my father at risk in China.

Call me, maybe? Trump reaches out to China’s president in a letter.

But he is now in contact, and promising a “constructive relationship” between the world’s two most powerful nations. The White House issued a statement saying Trump had “provided a letter” to Xi on Wednesday, thanking the Chinese leader for a congratulatory note he had sent on the U.S. president’s inauguration. Trump wished the Chinese people a “happy Lantern Festival and prosperous Year of the Rooster,” and said “he looks forward to working with President Xi to develop a constructive relationship that benefits both the United States and China,” according to the statement. That's pretty standard diplomatic language, but it was something of a change from the rhetoric Trump employed on the campaign trail and on Twitter, when he described China as an “enemy” of the United States and accused it of “raping” his country through unfair trade practices.  But Trump was at least getting in early for the Lantern Festival, which will be celebrated on Feb. 11.  In the last few days, the new U.S. administration appears to have taken a slightly less confrontational approach toward China, and some experts have been expecting a call between the two leaders soon, especially after national security adviser Michael Flynn spoke by telephone last week with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi. China's Foreign Ministry said it “highly commends” Trump for the letter, but declined to comment on whether there were plans for a phone call. “High-level interactions between China and the United States play an irreplaceable role in developing the bilateral relationship,” spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news conference. “Since the inauguration of President Trump, the two sides have been maintaining close interactions with each other.” Trump may be taking his time to call Xi, but Lu said there was “no need for me to comment” on suggestions that this represented a snub. And although Trump may have been late to wish China a happy new year, the important festival was not ignored by his family.   China’s Foreign Ministry welcomed those comments this week, while the official English-language China Daily called them a “mind-soothing pill” that “dispersed the clouds of war” that many feared had been gathering over the South China Sea. And though China objected when Mattis also expressed his strong support for Japan and pledged to press ahead with the deployment of a missile defense system for South Korea, that, perhaps, was only to be expected. “His style and positions reflected continuity from the Obama administration, and the kind of approach the Chinese have become comfortable dealing with over the last eight years,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing. But Trump’s focus on China’s large trade surplus with the United States, and his view of trade as a competitive, zero-sum game, may still spell tough times ahead in the relationship. Trump and Xi have spoken at least once by telephone, days after his election victory, when they “established a clear sense of mutual respect,” according to Trump’s transition team. At the time, Trump also reportedly said he believed the two leaders “will have one of the strongest relationships for both countries moving forward.” But Trump did cause huge consternation here when he also accepted a phone call from Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, whose administration is not recognized by China — or, indeed, granted diplomatic recognition by the United States under the one-China policy. And the fact that Trump has yet to talk to Xi since his inauguration has raised some eyebrows. “The Chinese have noticed they have had relatively less engagement with the new administration than others in the region, and are still trying to determine who they can work with among the new faces in Washington,” Haenle said. “It's a slow start on the China relationship, and that combined with some of President Trump's statements since his election has made the Chinese uncomfortable.... What China is really looking for is the first substantive interaction.” “He sent a letter rather than made a phone call, so Trump may still want to keep his distance from China, but a friendly signal is better than a provocation,” the paper quoted Chu Yin, an associate professor at the University of International Relations, as saying.

China parade will mark victory over Japan — and put neighbors in a bind

BEIJING — It’s the roll call that everyone is talking about. On Sept. 3, China will host a military parade in the heart of the capital to mark the 70th anniversary of “victory in the Chinese People’s War Against Japanese Aggression,” also known as the end of World War II. Beijing is almost ready for its close-up: There will be 2.8 million new flowerpots, olive branches and arrangements in the shape of doves. There will also be weaponry galore and goose-stepping soldiers in Tiananmen Square. But will there be foreign guests? At a time when regional tensions are running high, world leaders know that if they show up they’ll be present, and photographed at, a march that will likely trumpet anti-Japanese sentiment. But not going risks the displeasure of China, which sees the event as a chance to remind the world of both its wartime contributions and its rising international clout under President — and first-time national military parade host — Xi Jinping. “This is a big party for Mr. Xi, and in a way, a coming out party for China,” said Sheila A. Smith, author of “Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China” and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The guests who are there, versus the guests who do not come — that will be remembered.” Beijing insists that the event is about peace, not politics. The anniversary logo, for instance, features a V-shaped Great Wall flanked by five pigeons representing “five continents united and moving together towards a beautiful future.” Yet despite the official discourse, the display is “targeted at Japan at least to some extent,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, both in terms of historical grievances and present-day disputes. Plus, attendees would be there as Chinese military vehicles roll through the site of the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square — pretty much the opposite of a solid political photo op. For most leaders, it seems, it hasn’t been an easy choice. So far, only Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who recently held his own military parade, and a small clutch of other countries — including Mongolia, Egypt and the Czech Republic — have confirmed. The United States has not received an official invitation, said Benjamin Weber, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, but Chinese officials did raise the issue in a general way. It is still unclear whether Britain will attend, or whether Europe will have a sizable showing of any sort. In July, the European Union’s ambassador to China, Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, said he thought it was “unlikely” that top E.U. leaders would attend.“One concern we share is that if this event is taking place, including with a military parade, the concern is, is this really sending a message of reconciliation?” he said. Things are not much clearer in Asia. There have been rumors that Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — yes, Abe — was invited, though it seems extremely unlikely he would attend. At most, says Smith of the Council on Foreign Relations, he might stop by for a meeting after the main event, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel did after the parade in Moscow. Another question mark is North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who skipped Putin’s parade and generally seems content to stay on his own turf. Given Beijing’s frustrations with his regime, and the scene-stealing spectacle that would occur if he turned up, it seems unlikely that Chinese officials are begging him to come. The big get for the Chinese side would be South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, who shares something of the Chinese leadership’s antipathy toward Japan and has made diplomacy with China a top priority. For the Chinese, she may be the best bet, said John Delury, a China and Korea expert at Seoul’s Yonsei University. She has the advantage of being “get-able,” he said, and could “lend the event a little more international credibility.” Her aides on Monday said she is “carefully reviewing” the invitation. **Read more:** A subtle voice of World War II remorse in Japan: The emperor Japan’s premier says he will uphold apology for its wartime aggression China and Japan leaders break ice with first meeting, but no sign of warmth Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world Xu Yangjingjing contributed to this report.

America’s painfully outdated approach to China

_James Mann is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies and the author of three books about America and China, including “About Face: A History of America’s Curious Relationship With China.”_ _T_ his summer, President Obama offered a pithy description of the way that inertia sometimes prevents the United States from discarding old ideas that no longer fit current circumstances. “Sometimes we allow ourselves to be trapped by a certain way of doing things,” he said. “We don’t have to be imprisoned by the past. When something isn’t working, we can — and will — change.” The president was talking about Cuba. But he should also apply these words with equal force to U.S. policy toward China. As Washington prepares for a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, American thinking about China seems stuck on concepts developed in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. Since that time, however, China has evolved in ways that few, if any, in Washington saw coming. It has become more assertive overseas, more repressive at home and more mercantilist in its trade practices than was anticipated two decades ago. Back then, American leaders regularly predicted that trade and prosperity would produce a more open China, one that would ease into the existing international system created under U.S. leadership. Yet even as China moves in new directions, we use the mindset of the past when we talk about it. We continue to draw on ideas dating to Richard Nixon’s opening — even though it seems likely that Nixon himself, were he alive today, would take a much tougher stance toward China than he did in 1972. Several intellectual traps stand in the way of developing new approaches. The first is the notion of “engagement.” This concept dates to the period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when President George H.W. Bush resisted proposals to cut off all contact with Chinese leaders. Instead, he laid down a policy of engagement — meaning that his administration would meet with Chinese leaders in hopes of changing them. President Bill Clinton perpetuated the use of “engagement,” and it has become a catchphrase for conciliatory, non-punitive approaches to our differences. But it was never really clear what “engagement” sought, other than meetings and talk. And now, a quarter century after Tiananmen, when no one suggests cutting off contact, “engagement” has lost whatever slight meaning it once held. Likewise, those who resist any policy change frequently argue that, beginning with Nixon, eight presidents in a row have come around to roughly the same China policies — and that therefore these policies should not be altered. This idea also has a history. Since the Nixon era, several presidents — most notably Ronald Reagan and Clinton — have campaigned promising to change U.S. policy toward China, only to do an about-face in office. Yet the history isn’t so simple. Obama, for example, actually did a reverse about-face: He set out to avoid conflict, then toughened his approach after his first year in office. More fundamentally, as Obama’s words on Cuba recognize, what a series of predecessors have done does not answer what the United States should do when circumstances change. Nixon himself inherited a China policy carried out by his four immediate predecessors, but rightly reversed the policy. Then there are the recurrent calls for a “G-2.” It is sometimes proposed that China and the United States should reach a broad strategic accommodation allowing them, together, to guide the affairs of the world. This idea gained strength during the financial crisis, when China appeared to be the economically strongest partner for the United States. More recently, Xi’s repeated proposal for a “new type of major-power relationship” seems a variant of the old calls for a “Group of 2.” But such formulations overlook larger realities. They implicitly downgrade the interests of U.S. allies and friends (Japan, India, South Korea and the European Union, for starters) who would naturally feel threatened by the notion of the United States and China teaming up without them. They also ignore fundamental differences in values and political systems. Do advocates expect the United States to stay silent on issues such as China’s severe repression of dissent? The underlying reality is that the congruence of strategic interests that held the United States and China together in the late Cold War no longer exists. And the desire of the U.S. business community for trade and investment in China, which drove U.S. policy in the 1990s, has also been transformed: These days, U.S. businesses tend to come to the White House not to get help in expanding trade but looking for a tougher line on issues such as intellectual property and cybertheft. In this climate, efforts to perpetuate the old U.S.-China relationship seem increasingly out of touch. The truth is, the United States’ China policy is already changing at the working levels of government and at the grass-roots level, but our overriding ideas about this relationship have not kept pace. Over the next few years, a new U.S. policy toward China is sure to emerge, but it may do so gradually, from the bottom up. As it does, some simple concepts could be brought back into play. One is the idea that China should be treated by the same rules as other countries. Another is the notion of reciprocity: When China penalizes U.S. businesses or media, the United States should respond with similar limits on Chinese entities. We should develop a more businesslike approach, forsaking the dream that some personalized diplomacy or dramatic communiqué can bring back the special relationship of the past. The United States and China are in a new era. It’s time to develop policies and ideas that don’t try fruitlessly to replicate the past. **Read more here:** Steven Mufson: China, the new indispensable nation? David Ignatius: A U.S.-China ‘reset’? Eugene Robinson: U.S.-China pact is an accord the planet needed Ali Wyne: The balance of power between the U.S. and China

China expresses concern over North Korea tensions

BEIJING — Responding to regional worries over North Korea’s bellicose threats, China on Sunday expressed concern and what appeared to be veiled criticism of its longtime ally. “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said at an economic forum in Hainan province. Avoiding mentioning North Korea by name, Xi said, “While pursuing its own interests, a country should accommodate the legitimate interests of others.” Xi said the international community and its collective scrutiny should act as a platform for common development rather than an “arena where gladiators fight each other.” On Sunday, China’s Foreign Ministry also issued a statement saying it was “seriously concerned” about the “continuously escalating tensions.” The comments from China come on the heels of several days of escalating threats by North Korea against the United States and South Korea, including the possibility of nuclear attacks. China — long seen as a key factor propping up the regime in Pyongyang — recently has shown signs of frustration after North Korea ignored its pleas not to carry out a recent nuclear test. Chinese officials, who value stability above all else, are unlikely to abandon North Korea anytime soon. But sensing an opening amid Chinese frustrations, the Obama administration is trying to push Beijing to take a much stronger stance against the renegade country than it has in the past, U.S. officials have said in public and private comments in recent days. “Clearly with the border they have, with the economic relationship that they have, they can do more,” Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday at a women’s summit in New York. “What’s interesting about China’s stance now is that you can tell by the nature of their statements, by the nature of their actions, that, unlike in the past, they also are very much of the view that Kim Jong Un has gone too far, and that this now is a situation that has the potential to directly threaten their interests in the region — both economic and security.” Meanwhile, three U.S. senators called on China to apply more pressure on North Korea. “China does hold the key to this problem,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “Chinese behavior has been very disappointing, whether it be on cybersecurity, whether it be on confrontation in the South China Sea or whether their failure to rein in what could be a catastrophic situation,” he said. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who appeared on the same program, said he agreed with McCain. “You know, the Chinese hold a lot of the cards here,” Schumer said. “They’re by nature cautious, but they’re carrying it to an extreme. It’s about time they stepped up to the plate and put a little pressure on this North Korean regime.” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), appearing on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” said: “I blame the Chinese more than anybody else. They’re afraid of reunification. They don’t want a democratic Korea next to China, so they’re propping up this crazy regime, and they could determine the fate of North Korea better than anybody on the planet.” China’s statement Sunday, posted on the Web site of its Foreign Ministry, also seemed to dismiss as empty rhetoric North Korea’s warnings Friday that diplomats should think about leaving Pyongyang because of increasing tensions. Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China’s Embassy in Pyongyang is operating normally. In addition, China’s foreign minister called U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday night to discuss the situation, according to the Foreign Ministry. In the conversation, Wang Yi repeated China’s oft-stated position that issues with North Korea can be solved only through dialogue, but he also said China is opposed to “any provocative words and actions from any party in the region and does not allow troublemaking at the doorsteps of China.” Sean Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

Putting pressure on China probably won’t help U.S. workers. Here’s what might.

The U.S.-China relationship is one issue on which President Trump’s instincts are at least partly right — for China, let’s be honest, does not always play fair in international economic relations. It has limited respect for intellectual property; it subsidizes strategic industries with bargain loans and export credits; it uses government power over procurement to favor domestic firms. But diagnosing China’s sins is not the same as stopping them. The question is whether Trump, at this week’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and in the future, can hit upon a strategy that actually helps U.S. workers. There are, broadly, two ways to influence China. The first is direct bilateral pressure: The United States announces that certain forms of conduct are not acceptable. Bill Clinton famously tried this at the start of his presidency, when he linked China’s human rights to trade access; he got nowhere. During last year’s campaign, Trump promised similar toughness: He would declare China to be a currency manipulator “on day one.” Sensibly, Trump has backed away from that bravado. Most of the time, on most issues, China is too big to push around. Method two stands a better chance. It is to welcome China to the top table of the international system, and then demand that China play by the rules. After his failed bilateral experiment, this is what Clinton came around to: He brought China into the World Trade Organization. Since then, China’s behavior has not been perfect, but Beijing has abided by its WTO commitments more than reasonable commentators expected. Between 2001 and 2016, China was the defendant in 39 cases brought to the WTO dispute-settlement tribunal, and generally complied with adverse rulings. Meanwhile China initiated 15 of its own cases, winning several. If rules have generally worked better than bilateral pressure, that will be even truer in the future. As China’s economic weight catches up with the United States’, its leadership will be even less likely to respond to bullying. On the other hand, as China proudly assumes the mantle of global leadership, it will care more about its image in the world. The most obvious example of this solicitude came in January, when Xi delivered a widely noted speech in Davos, painting China as the defender of the international economic order. But Xi’s speech is part of a pattern. For the past three years or so, Chinese leaders have claimed interest in international law and China’s contribution to it. In February, Xi followed up on his Davos speech, declaring that China should “guide international society” toward “a more just and rational new world order.” As the Economist reported recently, China operates a $10 billion-a-year soft-power offensive, designed to win foreigners’ affection. That is many times what the United States spends annually on public diplomacy, according to David Shambaugh of George Washington University. Given China’s concern to be seen as a respectable superpower, the best way to constrain it is to promote international rules. Trump’s first instinct has been the opposite: He has denigrated the WTO, asserting that bilateral pressure is better. But there are signs that Trump is mellowing. He may be open to a better way. If Trump is to edge toward a rules-based strategy, the rules need to be credible. This is why he’s right to back away from his campaign promise to name China a currency manipulator. China has indeed manipulated its currency in the past, and may do so in the future: by holding the renminbi down, the government has boosted exports at the expense of foreign producers. But precisely because the United States has a stake in the principle that manipulation is damaging, it should not undermine that norm by invoking it disingenuously. Recently, China has engaged in the opposite of manipulation, intervening to prop up its currency rather than forcing it down. The same goes for the Trump team’s strange focus on bilateral trade balances. China’s trade surplus with the United States is an extremely poor measure of misconduct: It reflects factors ranging from the dollar’s reserve-currency status to China’s tendency to import parts from third countries, assemble them, and sell the finished products to America, so that a Korean semiconductor might show up as a Chinese export to the United States. Unless the Trump team discards its bilateral metric, it will discredit its China policy by sounding clueless. But that still leaves room for getting tough. Appealing to China’s professed belief in a fair international system, Trump could propose a cut to China’s auto tariff, which, at 25 percent, is fully 10 times higher than the auto tariff imposed by the United States. He could warn China against aggressive use of subsidies and procurement muscle as it builds its next generation of industries in tech and aircraft. And he should lead a global push to adapt international rules so that they can cope with the challenge of China’s peculiar state capitalism. This week’s China summit would be a good time to pivot to a policy that is true to Trump’s instincts but more refined in its strategic thrust. **Read more about this topic:** John Pomfret: The big problem with a China meeting? Trump has no China policy. Ely Ratner: Trump is making a huge mistake by giving VIP treatment to China Josh Rogin: Inside the Kushner channel to China

New tensions in India-China border dispute raise concerns

NEW DELHI — It was supposed to be a “golden period” in relations between India and China, but it is looking seriously tarnished. Early this year, China’s top diplomat, Dai Bingguo, arrived in New Delhi for a 15th round of talks between the nuclear-armed neighbors over their long — and long-disputed — border, proclaiming that they shared a historic opportunity to forge a brighter future “hand in hand.” But already India and China are squabbling again, and their frontier is the flash point. A visit by India’s defense minister to a border state claimed by China, accompanied by a fly-past by fighter jets recently stationed in the area, provoked some frosty advice from Beijing not to “complicate” matters. In return, the Indian defense minister, A.K. Antony, called China’s comments “most unfortunate” and “really objectionable.” The spat, experts say, is a symptom of a deterioration in relations that began in 2005, as India drew closer to the United States and negotiated a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. That new alignment appeared to threaten Beijing and set relations with India on a downward spiral — so much so that India’s multibillion-dollar military-modernization plans are now largely directed toward containing the growing threat from China. “Ever since the U.S. nuclear deal in 2005, relations with China have been going through a turbulent time,” said Brahma Chellaney at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “Nothing has changed in recent months to suggest that turbulence is easing or subsiding. What we are seeing actually is that Chinese state media is taking an increasingly hard line.” At the heart of the tension lies a seemingly intractable border dispute that erupted into a brief war in 1962. China claims the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, a thickly forested, mountainous region that shares cultural links with Tibet. India contests China’s occupation of a barren plateau in Kashmir, far to the west. In 2005, the two sides agreed to respect “settled populations” in any final deal, suggesting that they might one day agree to accept the status quo. But soon after the U.S.-India nuclear agreement was signed, the backsliding began. China took every opportunity to reassert its claim to Arunachal, which it refers to as Southern Tibet. Sensing that there was no longer any hope of a deal, India hardened its position, too. The extent of the deterioration in relations was underlined this week when a team of Indian foreign policy experts and former senior officials warned that India needed to be better prepared in case China decided to assert its territorial claims by force. “There is the possibility that China might resort to territorial grabs,” they wrote in a major review of Indian foreign policy, saying China probably would aim to occupy “bite-sized” chunks of land along the ill-defined frontier. “We cannot also entirely dismiss the possibility of a major military offensive in Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh [Kashmir].” In January, China denied a visa to an Indian air force officer who comes from the state and was due to visit Beijing as part of an Indian military delegation. New Delhi responded by canceling the entire trip. Antony then visited Arunachal for the state’s silver jubilee celebrations. The festivities included a fly-past by India’s top-of-the-line fighter jets, the Russian-made Sukhoi-30s, pointedly led by the same officer who was denied the visa. The Sukhois were stationed just outside Arunachal last year to counter the Chinese threat. “India should maintain the peace and safety of the border area together with China and refrain from taking any action that could complicate the issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing. It is the sort of diplomatically worded objection that India might have ignored a few years ago but now feels compelled to rebut. “India will not tolerate external interference of China into Indian territorial affairs,” Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said. In Chinese state media, calls for restraint and tolerance are mixed with jabs at the Indian government for being “pushy” or “surrendering” to increasingly nationalist public opinion. An article this month in the People’s Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, even upbraided India for suggesting that China’s occupation of a slice of Kashmir was in dispute at all. India is the world’s largest arms importer, and as tensions with China have risen, it has embarked on a military-modernization plan that is expected to cost $100 billion over the next decade. In January, India selected France’s Rafale for a $15 billion contract to supply 126 new fighter jets, while the air force has been upgrading landing strips throughout the Himalayas. The army has deployed about 36,000 additional troops near Arunachal Pradesh and plans to raise two more mountain divisions. At the annual Republic Day parade in January, India unveiled its latest and longest-range nuclear-capable missile, able to fly more than 2,000 miles and reach deep into China. India’s navy has taken a Russian nuclear submarine on a 10-year lease, and it gathered maritime officers from 14 countries for exercises beside its strategically important Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, a meeting that conspicuously excluded China. India is also spending $2 billion to set up a military command on the islands to counter China’s growing influence in the region. “The Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean,” James R. Clapper Jr., the U.S. director of national intelligence, told a Senate committee last month. A full-blown war between India and China appears highly unlikely, but a small border skirmish can’t be ruled out unless the two sides arrest the slide in relations, some experts say. With China’s leadership embroiled in a succession contest and India’s government seen as paralyzed by a lack of leadership, they are pessimistic about the chances of that happening soon. “The trajectory is all downwards, and there has been no significant attempt to address the issues that matter to both sides,” said Harsh Pant, a lecturer in the department of defense studies at King’s College London. “Before 2006, no one even talked of a Sino-Indian conflict, and economic relations were seen in a much more positive light. But that sense is gone now. “China is India’s biggest trading partner, but that does not preclude the possibility of some kind of border kerfuffle or minor skirmish in coming years,” he said. **More world news coverage:** \- North Korea agrees to moratorium on nuclear missile tests, U.S. says \- Netanyahu invokes Holocaust in push against Iran \- Iran’s underground nuclear site more vulnerable than portrayed, experts say \- Read more headlines from around the world

NASA under Trump is still waiting for marching (and launching) orders

Amid massive political upheaval, NASA just keeps cruising along, a $19 billion, 17,500-employee agency that so far has flown under the radar. NASA employees are waiting to find out whether they'll be told to send astronauts back to the moon. They hear rumors that the Trump administration will try to strip the agency of its Earth Science research. Most of all they are wondering who their new administrator will be. Their leader for nearly eight years, Gen. Charles Bolden, said his farewell this month, and Trump has not nominated a replacement. The name that keeps surfacing as a top candidate is Rep. Jim Bridenstine. In the meantime, the person in charge is a civil servant, Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot, who has been with the agency since 1989. “Right now it’s me,” he said of the administrator position. "I’ll be glad to get one in here.”  What Trump will want out of NASA is unclear, because no one's talking. Trump has rarely spoken about space, but he and his aides have now met several times with Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive of SpaceX. (Musk went twice to Trump Tower, and was part of a gaggle of business leaders that visited the White House earlier this week.)   Ultimately, NASA answers to the White House. Vice President Pence is expected to reestablish an entity known as the National Space Council, and serve as its chair. That would oversee not only NASA but the (this part has to be whispered) even more extensive U.S. military and national security space operations. (You should know that taxpayers fund a lot of telescopes that look down, not up.) President Obama killed his predecessor's moon program, Constellation, but Trump and Pence could revive it in some form, or find a way to combine a back-to-the-moon program with NASA's existing "Journey to Mars.” Key point: NASA's current plan is to go slow and go reliably. That means sending astronauts to Mars no sooner than the 2030s. Moreover, that first mission would call for the astronauts to orbit the Red Planet but not land. There would be no boots on Martian soil. That would come later.