True, it demonstrates, again, Beijing’s capacity for achievement most Americans have been loathe to attribute to them. In fact, recent developments in submarine warfare, fighter plane design, hovercraft landing vessels, supercomputers, have if nothing else, shown increasing ingenuity in leap-froging over licensed or stolen foreign technologies

Apparently U.S. intelligence knew of earlier failed attempts to accomplish something like this. Cyber warfare has long been a subject of deep concern with the U.S.’ escalating dependence on satellite communications as any glance at headgear of soldiers in Iraq indicates. Cyber sabotage is one aspect of asymmetrical warfare Beijing strategists continually proclaim, calling back over the centuries to traditional Chinese thinking about war.

Peter Brookes, former Pentagon official Heritage Foundation scholar, reported “the Department of Defense [in 2004] suffered a record 79,000 computer network attacks, including some that actually reduced the military's operational capabilities …]M]ost attacks on America's ‘digital’ Achilles Heel are originating from the People's Republic of China …”.

Beijing’s cyber guerrilla is another instance in Beijing attempting to demonstrate it can play in the big leagues. It seems certain more such “surprises” are ahead.

But a more fundamental aspect is not the action itself but the circumstances surrounding it. The event emphasizes again almost total ignorance of the U.S. about the process of Chinese decision-making.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put the case well: "We know what we know, we know that there are things we do not know, and we know that there are things we don't know we don't know." To no subject does this apply more fittingly at this moment than the nature of the Beijing regime and its intentions..

Speculation is rife among the China experts, even if the public’s attention for this important event is minimal because of the debate over Iraq.

First of all, there seems to be some question about how much Chinese leadership knew and when. If, as some would argue, the whole effort was propaganda, then why was there no ready-made ”packaging”.Initially there were even denials from Chinese diplomats it had taken place. U.S. requests to Beijing for an explanation only elicited confused and minimal information. It is rare a major Chinese military-technical event is not carefully coupled with a rationale, however ridiculous.

It seems unlikely, as some speculation has held, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao would have not anticipated a quite strong reaction from the U.S., Japan, and other interested parties. Are we then to conclude Chinese techno-military proceeded without a go-ahead from highest leadership?

It is true China — as the Soviet Union — has been pressing Washington for some new treaty prohibiting military activity in space. The Bush Administration announcements has been emphatic in proclaiming American national interest in space developments. Washington’s reluctance to undertake new treaty obligations with China clearly are a reflection of Beijing’s flagrant violations of earlier commitments; for example, Chinese government-owned companies have peddled missiles and missiles technology abroad in violation of anti-missile proliferation agreements.

But the larger concern is China’s continued professions of “a peaceful rising” as it acquires great power status, or for “harmonious society” with extensions to the international arena. Even was such a space venture to be undertaken, it was done without any warning. The method of destroying the satellite — that is, creation of additional space debris imperiling other satellites used for peaceful purposes — has long been a concern. It is one reason why both the U.S. and the Soviet Union ceased such anti-satellite destruction in the 1980s.

The event also fits into a recent pattern. For example, recent official full press publicity to development of a “fourth generation” fighter aircraft, said to compete with latest state of the art in the U.S., Russia and France. Yet in the demiworld of military intelligence, knowledge of that aircraft and its capabilities has been around for two years or more. The Chinese also publicized the development of an amphibious hovercraft landing vessel, designed for ventures beyond Beijing’s present threat to Taiwan. The penetration of Chinese submarines in waters off Japan, laser blipping of Japanese and American radar, all seem at least rather adventurously aggressive. Clandestinely, of course, the Chinese are doing such things as preparing for aircraft carrier operations.

When Deng Xiaoping, China’s former Paramount Leader, included military renewal as one of his “four modernizations” two decades ago, he also cautioned Beijing should keep its head down in international relations -- presumably until it had, in fact, reached great power status. That strategy had been assumed to be his successors’. But has a change taken place? Or is the Chinese military, pushing the envelope on its budget requirements, feeling its oats? Has the traditional Communist Party People’s Liberation Army symbiosis dissolved with accession of Party apparatchiks instead of old civil war veterans and growth of a new technocratic military elite? Or is this only reflection a bureaucratic struggle for resources in an economy, which while growing phenomenally, has overwhelming conflicting demands?

It is well to remember when Winston Churchill uttered his famous quote about the Soviet Union in October 1939, he linked it with :”I cannot forecast the action of Russia”. He might well have said the same about China today.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.