China tests anti-satellite weapon, unnerving U.S.

Clearly China continues to let the US know that it's aggressiveness will be met in kind. In a move that some call very un-Chinese in it's blunt force, the Chinese have made it clear they will counter the Bush Administration moves to militarize space.
International Herald Tribune

China successfully carried out its first test of an anti-satellite weapon last week, signaling Beijing's resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said today.


[...]At a moment that China is modernizing its nuclear weapons, expanding the reach of its navy and sending astronauts into orbit for the first time, the test appears to mark a new sphere of technical and military competition. American officials complained today that China made no public or private announcements about its test, despite repeated requests by American officials for more openness about their actions.


[...]Michael Krepon, cofounder of the Washington-based Henry L. Stimson Center, a private group that studies national security, called the Chinese test very un-Chinese.


"There's nothing subtle about this," he said. "They've created a huge debris cloud that will last a quarter century or more. It's at a higher elevation than the test we did in 1985, and for that one the last trackable debris took 17 years to clear out."


Mr. Krepon added that the administration has long argued that the world needs no space-weapons treaty because no such arms exist. "It seems," he said, "that argument is no longer operative."