The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

sets (mainly in CASC) such as with the establishment
of the Xi’an National Aerospace Industry Base. Here,
CASC is ramping up its spin-off for its small satellite
technology and applications. By concentrating these
resources in an industrial base, as described earlier, it
has won central funding and through a restructuring
is attracting outside investment. Already, after 2 years
of operation, numerous other aerospace related businesses
have moved to the Xi’an base in areas of chip
production, inertial guidance, spatial information systems,
and new energy sources and so on, attracting
talent and investment. The base is expected to earn
300 billion yuan by 2020. 143
This strategy holds great promise for CMI synergies
since a spatial concentration of assets to produce
satellites and related technology for both military
and civilian purposes help create the potential for
spin-on activity and two-way technology diffusion.
Virtually every space technology being pursued is of
interest to both military and civilian end-user; from
position/navigation, microsatellites, communication
satellites to remote sensing, and even manned space.
For instance, advances in autonomous proximity maneuvering
and virtual detection technology greatly
aid in allowing a number of smaller satellites to fly in
formation, comprising a network of satellites, making
disruption difficult, and replacement far easier than
if one large orbiting asset was disabled. 144 The same
technology is applicable to co-orbital, anti-satellite activity.
However, many obstacles exist to CMI in this
sector. While the application of most satellites are
dual-use in nature, and while CAS, universities, enterprises,
and other civilian agencies are increasingly
involved in upstream (manufacturing, launch services)
and downstream (satellite application) activi-
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