Welcome to episode 8 of the Dongfang Hour!

The past several months have seen a significant undertaking by the Secure World Foundation (SWF) and Caelus Foundation to help further bridge the gap between China and the US in the space sector, this being the report Lost Without Translation: Identifying Gaps in U.S. Perceptions of the Chinese Commercial Space Sector. The report was an eye-opening one, the first of its kind, interviewing a variety of stakeholders from the US space ecosystem about their perceptions of China and its space ecosystem. The report was authored by people who had experienced the Chinese space sector firsthand. With the authoring organizations also both being non-profits, the report provides a balanced and fair perspective on the current situation, with limited ulterior motives beyond trying to continue the peaceful and sustainable development of the commercial space sector

On the Dongfang Hour, we got the chance to sit down with two of the report’s authors, Ian Christiansen of the SWF and Rob Ronci of the Caelus Foundation, to get some deeper perspectives on the report and their research more generally. During our hour-long conversation, we discussed report findings, areas for further research, and even a little bit of rampant speculation. Without wanting to give away too many details, here are some high-level takeaways from our conversation with SWF and Caelus:

• Information asymmetry
  Put simply, the Chinese space industry is better-informed about the ongoings of the US than vice versa, by a fair margin. A lot of factors play into this--language barrier (a lot more Chinese people speak English than vice versa), cultural barrier (a lot more Chinese people have spent many years in the United States/the west than vice versa), and also probably human resources (it is relatively less expensive to hire lots of Chinese people to translate and publish information about western activities than vice versa). There is also clearly a large element of “the US is leading in space”, and therefore of course everyone covers US companies. The same is very likely true of Europe and the US--that is, Europeans are better-informed of American space activities than vice-versa, all else equal.
  
  
• Competition is not the same in all sectors
  Namely, despite the fact that there are approximately 25 Chinese commercial launch companies, the biggest competition today is in the geospatial imaging sector. With China having launched dozens of state-owned EO satellites (Gaofen) over the past several years, and with commercial companies such as CGSTL having launched a couple dozen smaller, but still significant satellites in the past 2-3 years, the competition appears to be coming from multiple sources.
  
  
• There is willingness, and indeed encouragement, by US companies to compete with Chinese companies, but under well-defined terms
  Whether well-defined terms means “US-led trading systems like the WTO” is not entirely clear, but at any rate, there is the belief on the US side that if this is a “fair fight”, the US companies stand a good chance of out-competing the Chinese companies, at least in some dimensions. There is probably some truth to this--we feel comfortable saying that the US economic system is, all else equal, more conducive to that oft-chided term “disruptive innovation”, simply because the incentive structures are more open and allow for more experimentation with less government interference.
  
  Overall, a great interview full of insightful points from our two guests. Moving forward, it seems unlikely that the US-China situation will improve markedly in the short term. 
  
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