China accuses US of 'turning space into a warzone' with Trump's Golden Dome missile defense project
China is concerned by President Donald Trump's proposal for a new U.S. missile defense system, called the Golden Dome, which is designed to protect against adversarial attacks on America.
Golden Dome has a "strong offensive nature and violates the principle of peaceful use in the Outer Space Treaty," Chinese Foreign Minister Mao Ning said Wednesday.
"The project will heighten the risk of turning space into a war zone and creating a space arms race, and shake the international security and arms control system," Mao said. "We urge the U.S. to give up developing and deploying global anti-missile system."
Both China and Russia have placed offensive weapons in space, like anti-satellite capabilities that could potentially be used to try to take the U.S. offline, American intelligence officials have warned.
However, China said it was the U.S. that was "obsessed" with offensive space dominance.
"The U.S., by putting itself first, and being obsessed with pursuing absolute security, violates the principle of, and diminishes, the security for all and undermines the global strategic balance and stability," Mao said.
"China is gravely concerned about this," she added. "We urge the U.S. to give up developing and deploying the global anti-missile system at an early date and take concrete actions to enhance strategic mutual trust between major countries and safeguard global strategic stability."
Trump laid out a broad overview of the Golden Dome plan from the White House on Tuesday, projecting the cost figure at $125 billion. The current government funding bill working its way through Congress includes an initial $25 billion to kick off the project.
Trump also offered an ambitious timeline for the project to be completed before he leaves office.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment on China's reaction.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, said the Golden Dome project could prompt talks on strategic arms control between Russia and the U.S.
The U.S. withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, citing Russian violations which Moscow denied.
"Now that the legal framework in this area has been destroyed, and the validity period has expired, or deliberately, let's say, a number of documents have ceased to be valid, this base must be recreated both in the interests of our two countries and in the interests of security throughout the planet," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
China’s space-based targeting capabilities have "grown most impressively" in recent years, according to Space Force Vice Chief Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, with hundreds of satellites now dedicated to tracking U.S. assets in orbit. He called China’s rapid advances "mind-boggling" during a hearing on Capitol Hill last month and said the U.S. was at risk of losing its dominance in orbit.
Weeks before that, Space Force Vice Chief of Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein revealed that China has been practicing satellite "dogfighting," a sign of its growing ability to conduct complex operations in orbit.
Space Force has observed "five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control," he said.
"That’s what we call dogfighting in space," Guetlein said. "They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to conduct on-orbit operations from one satellite to another."