World should watch China space program: Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) - The international community should keep a close eye on China's space development program because of its military potential, a Japanese government think tank said in a report published on Thursday.

In January 2007 China shot down one of its own disused satellites using a ballistic missile, in a move that alarmed many countries including Japan, which restricts its own space development to non-military uses. China said it would not repeat the test.

"It is likely that China will continue to actively engage in space development in the years ahead, given that such development serves as a vital means of achieving military competitiveness against the United States," Japan's National Institute for Defence Studies said.

China's space program has strong links with the People's Liberation Army. Many of the satellites launched and operated by China are believed to be used by the military, the think tank said.

"It would be in the interest of the international community to continue monitoring trends in China's space development program," the report said.

China's destruction of the satellite posed new problems for Japan's missile defense system, which relies on information from U.S. military satellites, according to one of the report's authors.

"One of the topics of Japan's missile defense development is how much Japan should rely on the U.S. satellite system," Sugio Takahashi, a senior fellow at the institute, told a news conference.

"We cannot over-rely on U.S. satellites now, so we need to build our own ground-based network systems," he added.

Any U.S. strike on a Chinese missile base could also provoke a retaliatory attack on U.S. bases in Japan, he added.

Japan, Washington's closest partner in missile defense, set up land-based PAC-3 anti-missile interceptors last year and used a ship-based system to successfully down a dummy missile in a test off Hawaii in December.

The institute's report also focused on the development of China's navy, saying that it would most likely build aircraft carriers and regularly sail the open sea.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Hugh Lawson)