China on the verge of a ‘space Pearl Harbor’ moment?

China’s expanding space sector is often portrayed in the West as a possible threat. A closer look reveals a growing market in which private and state-owned enterprises contend with a number of challenges.

On 3 December 2025 the control hall at China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert rang with thunderous applause. A red banner appeared on the giant screen, bearing the words ‘Warmest Congratulations to LandSpace’, whose new Zhuque-3 launch vehicle had just delivered its payload to orbit.

The mood changed after a warning light signalled abnormal combustion during the recovery of the rocket’s first stage, which became engulfed in smoke and flames before crashing to the ground 40 metres from the centre of the touchdown zone. But in an upbeat statement on its official WeChat account, LandSpace celebrated technological advances successfully tested during the flight: nine engines operating in parallel, stage separation using a pneumatic system rather than pyrotechnic devices, laser-welded stainless steel propellant tanks. A great achievement.

France’s specialist press framed the launch as competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX – typical media treatment of Chinese space activities. A Europresse search using the keywords ‘space’ and ‘China’ revealed that 18 out of 37 articles from ‘reputable’ media in the past 12 months focused on Chinese-US rivalry or a military space threat from Beijing: ‘China’s space station in Argentina alarms the US’ (Les Échos, 18 August 2025); ‘Will China soon control space?’ (Science & Vie, 17 March 2025); ‘Building a Chinese SpaceX: China challenges the US in space and accelerates the growth of its capabilities’ (Le Figaro, 29 September 2025).

The ‘space threat’ narrative is especially dominant in US political circles. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission heard last year that ‘China is building massive manufacturing capability to dominate space [and] bifurcate the world into their sphere and ours’. This view first gained traction in the early 2000s, after the Rumsfeld Commission warned of a ‘Space Pearl Harbor’. It was repeated in government strategy documents, and (…)

Full article: 1 853 words.

Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault

Lucie Sénéchal-Perrouault has a PhD in science history and is member of the Alexandre Koryé Centre.

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