Is China’s satellite zapping simply old-fashioned sabre-rattling? Or is it a rational step to restrict the use of space weapons?

How do you reconcile China’s shooting down of a satellite earlier this month with the subsequent insistence by its foreign ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, that China opposes military competition in space?

China has not yet explained its objectives. But the action makes perfect sense in the context of game theory, the conventional framework for analysing conflict and cooperation.

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