China's view on international responsibility in the field of space sustainability and security

The space environment is a globally shared resource. Those whose actions have a greater impact on the environment, i.e. China and the other major spacefaring countries, have a proportional, thus greater responsibility to keep the resource usable and secure. It is through these actors' responsible behaviour that space around Earth can be kept from degrading so to threaten sustainability of the different activities it hosts. In particular, the PRC is a fundamental actor in keeping space sustainable and safe, since it possesses valuable capabilities and is itself responsible, as a spacefaring country, of part of the sustainability and security issues related to the ¿3 Cs of space¿. Moreover the greatest spacefaring nation, the United States, is displaying a high degree of distrust towards China in this field, rendering a fruitful cooperation between the two very difficult. In order for space to be secure ¿ and in order to make cooperation with Washington more likely in the future ¿ it is fundamental that China act as a responsible power: however, its attitude towards the shouldering of global responsibilities such as this is debated. China's behaviour in space framed as behaviour towards a common good has not yet been thoroughly discussed in academic literature. This paper will therefore explore China's behaviour towards space as a global common in order to establish if it can be considered a responsible power in this regard. The first chapter will include a literature review dedicated to the theme of international responsibility, global commons and global governance seen through the lenses of Chinese academic thought: articles by Chinese scholars written in the past five years will be taken into consideration. In fact, it is pivotal to understand what the Chinese view on the subject of responsibility is before coming to any conclusion regarding its attitude towards it: most of the studies on this field come from the Western academic world, and the very concepts of ¿responsible power¿ and global governance have been dubbed as ¿Western¿ ideas by China (Yeophantong, 2013). Therefore, examining the issue through non-Chinese works would skew the analytic frame it should be discussed through. The second chapter will focus on China's behaviour towards space as a global common: efforts to keep the space environment safe and sustainable can be linked to a responsible attitude on the international stage. Three ¿fields of action¿ of space sustainability and security drafted by the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) will be considered: capacity-building programmes, legal and regulatory regimes and diplomacy and cooperation frameworks. In the third and last chapter the findings will be discussed to draw some conclusions about China's responsible or irresponsible behaviour to date and about what it will more likely be like in the near future.