Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 10, 2026

Geostrategy-Direct

By Richard Fisher

An “international” satellite project and a Sept. 5 revelation in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) indicate that China is moving to contest cislunar space, the strategic zone between the Earth and the Moon.

On Sept. 4 state media China Daily revealed the International Cislunar Cubesat Constellation Program of China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory and the International Deep Space Exploration Association.

By 2030, this international group that includes Thailand, Serbia and Egypt will launch 30 small Cubesat satellites for “for systematic space environment monitoring, gamma-ray burst detection, and lunar resources exploration.”

One reason for China to so monitor cislunar space appeared the next day, Sept. 5, when the South China Morning Post published an article on a recent Chinese academic journal’s article analyzing potential combat in cislunar space — this is rarely a “coincidence” in Chinese state media — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was sending a message.

SCMP reported the authors of an article in the July issue of the Chinese academic journal Command and Control, “have explored how a war could one day spill into the vast space between the Earth and the moon, with rival spacecraft chasing and evading each other, trying to slip past defences and even blocking strategic routes.”.

The article was written by a team led by Dang Zhaohui, an associate professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University’s (NPU) school of astronautics; NPU is a major technology research and development center for China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

While the actual journal article is not yet available on the Chinese web page of Command and Control, it was important enough to be shared with Ohio-based SCMP reporter Xing Lin.

Though there is little cause to question Xing Lin’s reporting on the journal article, it is necessary to note that she was likely given privileged access to help advance a political narrative; a major propaganda goal that is also regularly advanced by SCMP is to broadcast China’s growing military superiority.

The CCP would want the world to understand that at a minimum, China is unwilling to accept rules for behavior on the Moon that do not originate from the CCP.

It has been rare for CCP approved publications to actually discuss the conduct of warfare in space, lest there be deviations from official propaganda that China’s goals in space are all peaceful.

According to Xing Lin’s reporting the NPU authors do not describe military conflict on the Moon but instead stress how conflict could evolve in cislunar space.

The article quotes associate professor Dang saying, “What is at stake in cislunar orbital competition is not any single spacecraft, orbit or route, but the ability to access, control and use space — and to deter adversaries — that they provide.”

The SCMP article notes that “modern warfare increasingly depends on space-based capabilities” and a conflict on Earth could extend into cislunar space as countries seek to protect their own space assets while denying access and operational freedom to enemies.

The NPU authors claim, according to SCMP, that previous studies — likely Chinese studies — have only explored limited military conflicts in space.

In contrast, the NPU authors expand on the possibilities by “grouping possible cislunar conflicts into six types, including:

• Pursuit and evasion,
• Attack and defense,
• Blockade and counter-blockade, and
• Deception and identification…The scenarios range from encounters between individual spacecraft to contests over entire regions.”

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  Space war: China focused on combat scenarios in cislunar space