China has shielded its space station against embargoes and sanctions. The key is how it has built it

When Yang Liwei became The first Chinese astronaut in 2003The United States and Russia – bypassing the advances of the former Soviet Union – already accumulated decades of experience and more than fifty manned missions.

In just over twenty years, that gap has been reduced by leaps and bounds. Of a modest debut, China has become humans to space, Mars And finally, To raise your own space station.

A project that points to self -sufficiency with its own technology

In Beijing they do not hesitate to show off technological independence. Yang Hong, chief engineer of the space station system, summed it up in June this year: “The central technologies of the Chinese Space Station have intellectual property totally independentand all its components are of national manufacture. ”

The statement is ambitious: an orbital laboratory raised without resorting to foreign licenses, with all its critical systems designed and produced in China. To understand how China has come to raise its own space station, it is convenient to go back to 2011.

That year, the US Congress approved the call Wolf amendment, a provision that prevents NASA and some federal offices use funds to cooperate bilaterally with Chinese entities in spatial matters, except express authorization from Congress and Certification of the FBI.

This includes the exchange of technology, data or training, and in practice has blocked any Chinese access route to the International Space Station through NASA.

The measure was officially justified for security reasons and concerns about sensitive technology transfer. Analysts like Makena Youngfrom the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), argue that the exclusion imposed by the Wolf amendment “has encouraged China to Accelerate your space programscreating a serious competitor for American leadership in this key scanner of exploration ”

Everything indicates that this led Beijing to reinforce its long-term plans and redefine its strategy: move towards a manned program with greater independence, with Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 as test laboratories before the current station.

Now, is there inheritance of previous designs? Yes, and it is not a secret. But one thing is the historical lineage and another, the current dependence. The key is in critical blocks, presumably energy, attitude control, life support, navigationcommunications, computation and software.

If those links are under national control, the self -sufficiency narrative gains strength, which means that there are no weak points that a rival country can take advantage of.

In operations, there have been no public signs of external dependence: crew rotations and the resupplies have been fulfilled. But there enters the nuance: outside the official story, there are no independent verifications, so it is convenient to avoid absolute, despite the solid signals of autonomy.

If we see this from a broader perspective we can discover that the US vetoes They have promoted the development of more advanced national chipsimprovements in manufacturing nodes, An impulse in electric mobility. External barriers have not stopped Beijing: they have been, rather, A strategic catalyst.

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