China's military-run space station in Argentina is a 'black box'

When China built a military-run space station in Argentina’s Patagonian region it promised to include a visitors’ center to explain the purpose of its powerful 16-story antenna.

The center is now built - behind the 8-foot barbed wire fence that surrounds the entire space station compound. Visits are by appointment only.

Shrouded in secrecy, the compound has stirred unease among local residents, fueled conspiracy theories and sparked concerns in the Trump administration about its true purpose, according to interviews with dozens of residents, current and former Argentine government officials, U.S. officials, satellite and astronomy specialists and legal experts.

The station’s stated aim is peaceful space observation and exploration and, according to Chinese media, it played a key role in China’s landing of a spacecraft on the dark side of the moon in January.

But the remote 200-hectare compound operates with littleoversight by the Argentine authorities, according to hundreds of pages of Argentine government documents obtained by Reuters and reviewed by international law experts. (For an interactive version of this story: tmsnrt.rs/2TlXEMj)

President Mauricio Macri’s former foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, said in an interview that Argentina has no physical oversight of the station’s operations. In 2016, she revised the China space station deal to include a stipulation it be for civilian use only.

CONAE also said it had no staff permanently based at the station, but they made “periodic” trips there.

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The United States has long been worried about what it sees as China’s strategy to “militarize” space, according to one U.S. official, who added there was reason to be skeptical of Beijing’s insistence that the Argentine base was strictly for exploration.

Other U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters expressed similar concerns.

“The Patagonia ground station, agreed to in secret by a corrupt and financially vulnerable government a decade ago, is another example of opaque and predatory Chinese dealings that undermine the sovereignty of host nations,” said Garrett Marquis, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

Some radio astronomy experts said U.S. concerns were overblown and the station was probably as advertised - a scientific venture with Argentina - even if its 35-meter diameter dish could eavesdrop on foreign satellites.

Tony Beasley, director of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said the station could, in theory, “listen” to other governments’ satellites, potentially picking up sensitive data. But that kind of listening could be done with far less sophisticated equipment.

“Anyone can do that. I can do that with a dish in my back yard, basically,” Beasley said. “I don’t know that there’s anything particularly sinister or troubling about any part of China’s space radio network in Argentina.”

The agreement obliges China to inform Argentina of its activities at the station but provides no enforcement mechanism for authorities to ensure it is not being used for military purposes, the international law experts said.

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“It really doesn’t matter what it says in the contract or in the agreement,” said Juan Uriburu, an Argentine lawyer who worked on two major Argentina-China joint ventures. “How do you make sure they play by the rules?”

“I would say that, given that one of the actors involved in the agreements reports directly to the Chinese military, it is at least intriguing to see that the Argentine government did not deal with this issue with greater specificity,” he said.

China’s space program is run by its military, the People’s Liberation Army. The Patagonian station is managed by the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC), which reports to the PLA’s Strategic Support Force.

Beijing insists its space program is for peaceful purposes and its foreign ministry in a statement stressed the Argentine station is for civilian use only. It said the station was open to the public and media.

“The suspicions of some individuals have ulterior motives,” the ministry said.

Asked how it ensures the station is not used for military purposes, Argentina’s space agency CONAE said the agreement between the two countries stated their commitment to “peaceful use” of the project.

It said radio emissions from the station were also monitored, but radio astronomy experts said the Chinese could easily hide illicit data in these transmissions or add encrypted channels to the frequencies agreed upon with Argentina.

Argentine officials have defended the Chinese station, saying the agreement with China is similar to one signed with the European Space Agency, which built a station in a neighboring province. Both have 50-year, tax-free leases. Argentine scientists in theory have access to 10 percent of the antenna time at both stations.

The law experts who reviewed the documents said there is one notable difference: ESA is a civilian agency.

“All of the ESA governments play by democratic rules,” Uriburu said. “The party is not the state. But that’s not the case in China. The party is the state.”

In the United States, NASA, like the ESA, is a civilian agency, while the U.S. military has it own space command for military or national security missions. In some instances, NASA and the military have collaborated, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“The line does blur sometimes,” he said. “But that’s very much the exception.”