China's Sputnik Surprise

In a great report by Charles P. Vick a Senior Fellow, Space Defense policy, for globalsecurity.org we can see the beginnings of what could amount to a modern day Sputnik surprise for America.

Mr. Vick takes great care to analyze open source information to draw a conclusion that by 2015 China could beat the US in a space race. Even today we can see, the Chinese are already quickly progressing through all the initial stages of manned space flight in an effort to catch-up to America in Space technology.

It is only of matter of time before the quickly expanding Chinese space program outpaces the stagnant US program. In a different era this would not have been a tragic problem for us, but instead would have acted as a catalyst for progress and advancement. However, with the state of the US economy and industry we will not be able to recover from this surprise, and in the end be forced to surrender our technological advantage. As Mr. Vick says,

"In the final analysis China ’s efforts in space can only help, because it will force whoever occupies the Oval Office to address issues that have been largely ignored since the early 1970's. The US however, may not even be able to address these issues because of problems with the economy, huge national debt, and a possible devaluation of the dollar. The US is simply not the economic powerhouse it once was because of poor internal industrial management decisions, to the delight of many opponents of our social system world wide. If we do not watch it we can bankrupt the US economy as the former Soviet Union did to its self creating a huge vacuum for chaos to break loose far worse than the current situation."

This advantage in space will quickly lead to the military supremacy of the PLA over any opposition force including the US military. With the military advantage the PRC will be able to carry out its political ambition of world dominance. For as the report says, "The Military is the State and the State is the Military under this Chinese authoritarian regime."