Jane Cai
The Chinese people have been urged to stay “calm and objective” about the country’s advances in cutting-edge weapons by a veteran rocket scientist, who warned that “a lot of effort” was still needed.
An array of advanced rockets, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, featured in last month’s Victory Day parade in Beijing along with other hi-tech weapons. The spectacle generated considerable public enthusiasm.
In an interview for a popular video account, Zhao Ruian, 84, a former researcher with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, said the country had gained an advantage in some areas of aerospace technology but warned people not to let their expectations get too high.
“We’ve made strides, but overall, sustained effort is essential,” Zhao said in the video. “View progress calmly and objectively – our true breakthroughs lie [ahead] in 2050, not hubris today.”
While Zhao gave no explanation for the year, it echoes President Xi Jinping’s strategic objective of “building a world-class military by the middle of this century”.
The informal interview with the “Beijing Daming” vlog, which has around 2 million followers on the social media platform Douyin, was carried out in a park in the Chinese capital.
At the start, Zhao was asked to introduce himself and list some of his achievements.
He replied that he had set out a theoretical framework for missile defence systems such as the Golden Dome network in his 2008 book Space Weapon Orbital Design.
The Golden Dome is a proposed multilayer defence system for the United States, intended to detect and destroy various foreign threats – including ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles – before they launch or while in flight.
In May, President Donald Trump announced plans for the network, which would be a much larger and more comprehensive version of Israel’s Iron Dome system. However, so far no practical details of how it would work have been produced by the Pentagon or US defence contractors.
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