Do you remember last year when the West called China “irresponsible” after debris from the Long March 5B rocket landed in the Indian Ocean? Since then, reports have surfaced that a Chinese satellite was spotted cleaning up space junk in orbit. Wow, surely Western media will be happy, right? Wrong! Hey you guys, welcome back to Reports on China, I’m Andy. Let’s get reporting!
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In May 2021, the Western community went into a panic over the re-entry of China’s Long March 5B rocket and where it was going to land. NASA said China was being “irresponsible” with its space junk, and a Harvard astrophysicist called Beijing “lazy” for allowing the rocket to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up without a pre-set path, which is actually fairly common practice.
Fast-forward a few months, and DW News reported that a Chinese satellite was spotted cleaning up Earth’s space debris by booting a decommissioned satellite out of harm’s way so that it wouldn’t collide with other spacecraft.
China’s SJ-21 satellite was apparently seen approaching China’s dead Compass-G2 satellite, before connecting, “dancing” and then booting it out of the 300km orbit area of other spacecraft and away from potential danger.
But could Western media like DW News ever complete an otherwise wholly positive and quite interesting China story without adding a “China bad” aspect? Of course not!
“There's nothing wrong with throwing out the trash — many other countries have launched or are currently developing technologies to clear space junk,” the article says. “However, despite the seeming ubiquity of efforts to develop and implement space junk disposal technology, some U.S. officials have expressed worry over Chinese trash disposal satellites like the SJ-21.”
And despite this story being of intrinsic interest in and of itself, DW News couldn’t help but to play up the “China bad” aspect majorly in their tweet. “A Chinese satellite was spotted apparently clearing up space junk,” their tweet read. “But US officials are concerned the technology could be used against non-junk satellites.”
Thankfully the comments section wasn’t having any of it.
“they cant do anything nice or responsible without a bunch of racist western douchebags saying “bUt cHiNa bAd” one person said.
“Not an invention of Anglo Saxon Christian western Caucasian world = concern that it maybe evil” another added.
“America always thinks negatively. The day the thinking becomes positive, there will be only peace in the world”
