White House officials said the US and other nations, which they did not identify, had “expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese”. Despite its protest, the Bush administration has long resisted a global treaty banning such tests because it says it needs freedom of action in space. Jianhua Li, a spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said that he had heard about the anti-satellite story but that he had no statement or information.

At a time when China is modernising its nuclear weapons, expanding the reach of its navy and sending astronauts into orbit for the first time, the test appears to mark a new sphere of technical and military competition.

In late August, President Bush authorised a new national space policy that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests. The policy said the US would “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space” and “dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so”.

It declared the US would “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests”. The Chinese test “could be a shot across the bow,” said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Centre for Defence Information, a private group in Washington that tracks military programs. “For several years, the Russians and Chinese have been trying to push a treaty to ban space weapons. The concept of exhibiting a hard-power capability to bring somebody to the negotiating table is a classic cold war technique.”

... contd.