Chinese satellite forces 4,400 of its Starlink rivals into lower altitude: study
Researchers in China said the SpaceX decision was ‘directly triggered’ by a close call between two satellites in December
The two satellites passed within about 200 metres (656 feet) of each other on December 10, shortly after a launch from northwestern China, according to a social media post last month by Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice-president of engineering.
US looking inward under Trump made room for China’s development, expert says
As US president reshapes Washington’s policy, Beijing may be left in an increasingly ‘complex and volatile’ world, Ni Feng says
Ni Feng, a researcher and former director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of American Studies, said the Trump administration’s “disruptive” overhaul of US diplomacy was sending the international system into a “more volatile and uncertain” phase.
This could leave Beijing facing an increasingly “complex and volatile” outside world, he warned during an event on January 15 organised by the Shanghai Development Research Foundation (SDRF), a non-profit advisory body.
“The US strategic retrenchment and looking inward have created objective conditions for China to strive for development space,” Ni said, according to an excerpt of his speech published by the SDRF on its social media channel on Monday.
“The US … more tending to be utilitarian and restless, will also increase external uncertainty and risks,” he told the event.
“In the face of a United States that is ‘more restless, inward-looking and utilitarian’, the key for China is not to react passively to [America’s] policy changes but to enhance the certainty of [our] own development.”
Such concerns – recently stoked by Trump’s talk of taking over Greenland and the dramatic US abduction of Venezuela’s former leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife – were laid bare by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney last week.
Questions have also been mounting over how the White House’s foreign policy approach could shape the China-US relationship – dubbed “G2” by Trump, although Beijing has not embraced the term – especially given the multiple potential occasions this year for face-to-face summits between Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, amid a fierce strategic rivalry.
Ni said the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy had “systematically repudiated” the diplomatic paradigm that Washington had followed for more than eight decades since World War II, notably by refusing to continue providing global public goods, diluting alliance commitments and abandoning the outreach of values abroad.
He described the strategic transition as an inevitable outcome, as the US no longer possessed the absolute power to dominate the world single-handedly, faced deep-seated structural challenges at home, and was burdened by long-standing flaws in its traditional diplomatic model.
Under the American shift, international relations were becoming more prone to great-power politics and the law of the jungle, he warned, with the cohesion and institutional credibility of the US alliance system set to erode in the long run, while interstate rivalry would grow increasingly overt.
Focusing on managing its own work properly and solidifying the foundations of development had emerged as China’s “fundamental strategy” for coping with offshore shocks, Ni continued.
“In an international environment of rising uncertainty, internal stability and sustained development are the most important strategic resources,” he said.
“Only by continuously enhancing comprehensive strength, institutional resilience and the quality of development can [China] maintain its strategic initiative.”
