China has urged the United States to stop expanding its military capabilities in outer space, warning that the deployment of weapons in orbit could contribute to a wider global arms race. The warning followed an acknowledgement by a senior Pentagon official that the United States has weapons in orbit, a disclosure Chinese state media described as a significant shift in Washington’s approach to space security.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday that Beijing opposed the weaponisation of outer space and efforts to turn it into a war zone. He called on Washington to take concrete measures to preserve global strategic stability.
“We urge the U.S. to stop expanding military build-up in outer space, and uphold global strategic stability with concrete actions,” Guo told a regular press briefing.
The comments followed remarks on Monday by US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, who said the United States had “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action”. Meink did not identify the weapons, but his statement represented the strongest acknowledgement yet by a Pentagon official that the United States has weapons deployed in orbit.
The disclosure immediately became a focus of Chinese state media, which portrayed it as evidence of a potentially significant change in the military use of space. The state-backed Global Times reported on Tuesday that the acknowledgement exposed what it described as Washington’s pursuit of “space hegemony” and warned that the development could fuel a global space arms race.
Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping told the newspaper that the US acknowledgement marked a shift away from relying primarily on protecting space assets and using ground-based counter-space systems towards the direct deployment of weapons in orbit.
“If the U.S. continues down this path, other countries may be forced to respond,” Song said.
The exchange highlights growing concern over the military significance of outer space, where satellites and other space-based systems play an important role in modern military operations. The Chinese statements, however, focused specifically on the consequences of placing weapons in orbit and the possibility that other countries could respond by strengthening their own counter-space capabilities.
Xinhua, China’s state news agency, raised similar concerns last week in an analysis of a US orbital military exercise. It warned that Washington’s efforts to weaponise space risked creating what it called a “security dilemma”, in which measures taken by one country to strengthen its security could prompt other countries to develop additional military capabilities in response.
According to the Xinhua analysis, those developments could then be viewed by the United States as new threats, potentially creating a cycle of escalating counter-space capabilities.
Guo’s call for Washington to halt its military build-up therefore comes at a moment when the public acknowledgement of US weapons in orbit has intensified Chinese concerns about the future military balance in space. Beijing has framed the issue around preventing the weaponisation of outer space and maintaining strategic stability, while the US statement presented its orbital capabilities as intended to defend military forces against hostile action.
The identities and capabilities of the weapons referenced by Meink were not disclosed, leaving the precise nature of the US systems acknowledged by the Pentagon official unspecified.
