WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials said that they had been unable to get even the most basic diplomatic response from China after their detection of a successful test to destroy a satellite 10 days ago, and that they were uncertain whether China's top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, were fully aware of the test or the reaction it would engender.
In interviews over the past two days, American officials with access to the intelligence on the test said that the United States kept mum about the anti-satellite test in hopes that China would come forth with an explanation.
It was more than a week before the intelligence leaked out: A Chinese missile had been launched, and an aging weather satellite in its path, more than 500 miles above the Earth, had been reduced to rubble. But protests filed by the United States, Japan, Canada and Australia, among others, were met with silence -- and quizzical looks from officials in China's Foreign Ministry, who seemed to be caught unaware.
The American officials presume that Hu was generally aware of the missile testing program, but speculate that he may not have known the timing of the test. China's continuing silence would appear to suggest, at a minimum, that Hu did not anticipate a strong international reaction, either because he had not fully prepared for the possibility that the test would succeed, or because he did not foresee that American intelligence on it would be shared with allies, or leaked.
The threat to U.S. interests is clear: The test demonstrated that China could destroy American spy satellites in low-Earth orbit (the very satellites that picked up the destruction of the Chinese weather satellite).
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Chinese military officials have extensively studied how the United States has used satellite imagery in the Persian Gulf War, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in tracking North Korea's nuclear weapons program -- an area in which there has been some limited intelligence-sharing between Chinese and American officials. Several senior administration officials said that such studies had included extensive analysis of how satellite surveillance could be used by the United States in case of a crisis over Taiwan.
