China Needs a 2.0 Security Offer to Win Middle Powers' Space Alliances

Space and defence planners in middle powers now face an inflection point: Washington is demanding higher defence spending and closer alignment while warning that access to the US defence industrial base is a privilege, not a right, and Beijing is marketing multipolarity without yet showing it can protect partners in a conflict. For space agencies and defence ministries, this raises hard questions about launch dependencies, satellite security, and whether China can move beyond civil cooperation to become a reliable security partner. Colby's Manila remarks make clear the Trump administration will punish hedging, but Beijing has not yet offered the security guarantees that would justify shifting space procurement or alliance alignment away from Washington.

Weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is due at the White House, Washington's undersecretary of defence for policy, Elbridge Colby, delivered one of the administration's sharpest rebukes yet to allied governments—and in doing so exposed the central contradiction Beijing faces in its courtship of middle powers. Speaking in Manila on August 10, Colby told regional partners that the United States sought 'partners, not protectorates', pressed them to increase defence spending, and dismissed middle-power alliances designed to exclude America as 'fashionable but superficial ideas'. The remarks, published by the South China Morning Post on August 19, build on Colby's mid-July criticism that a collective middle-powers strategy rests on a faulty understanding of international relations and wastes allies' time, money and political capital. His warning that access to the US defence industrial base is 'a privilege, not a right' transforms the competition from a diplomatic abstraction into a concrete procurement and capability question.

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Countries that once balanced between the United States and China now face explicit American demands to raise defence spending, align procurement with US priorities, and avoid hedging through third-party groupings.

For Beijing, the timing is critical. Xi Jinping's planned White House visit sits just weeks after Colby's Manila speech, and Chinese analysts are interpreting the Trump administration's approach as a 'flexible realist' strategy. Shi Yinhong, professor of international affairs at Renmin University of China, described Colby's position as both doctrine and negotiating tactic, and noted that Washington has for months criticised nearly all of its advanced allies, often using this as a form of extortion—yet none have significantly or lastingly improved relations with Beijing. That observation is a double-edged sword for China. It suggests Washington's pressure has not yet driven allies into Beijing's arms, but it also means China has failed to convert allied frustration into durable strategic realignment.

The middle-power debate is no longer abstract. Countries that once balanced between the United States and China now face explicit American demands to raise defence spending, align procurement with US priorities, and avoid hedging through third-party groupings. Colby's dismissal of middle-power alliances as a distraction is aimed at killing emerging formats that exclude Washington, but it also raises the cost of neutrality. For China, this creates an opening to promote a multipolar world not dominated by the United States—a vision Xi has long advanced. Yet the source analysis is blunt: China will need a 'more persuasive security offer' to win over middle powers. Trade, infrastructure finance, and rhetorical support for a multipolar order are not enough when the core issue is security. Countries facing a more transactional and demanding Washington want credible alternatives for defence technology, arms transfers, intelligence sharing, and ultimately protection in a conflict.