Argentinian congress approves deal with China on satellite space station

Amid the barren and windswept Andes foothills of Argentina’s southern Neuquén province, a large billboard signals in English the entrance to the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC) – China’s first space installation outside its own borders.

After two years’ work, some 300 Argentinian workers led by nine Chinese managers have completed the cement casing for a 35-metre-diameter antenna – and on Wednesday night the base was finally approved by Argentina’s congress, amid a fierce debate about its true purpose.

Designed to track unmanned Chinese missions to Mars and the moon, the installation is due to go into operation next year. But opposition politicians have raised fears that it could eventually be used for military purposes, drawing Argentina into unwanted confrontation with third countries, such as the US.

“It’s dual civilian-military technology,” said opposition senator and presidential hopeful Fernando Solanas. “It can be used for both aerospace and missile tracking.”

Congressional approval for the base was tacked on to a broad and equally controversial economic and trade agreement finalised during President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s official visit to China earlier this month.

As in the case of other vital laws pushed through by Fernández, the China agreement was approved in a rushed rubber-stamp vote by what Argentina’s press calls the president’s “automatic majority” in Congress, where the president’s FPV Victory Front party holds the majority in both houses.

This has not stopped opposition legislators from speaking out loudly against both the space base and the economic deal with Beijing.

Fiery opposition legislator Elisa Carrió compared the agreement with China with the £1m ($1.5m) borrowed from Barings Brothers in London in 1824 - a loan that it took Argentina 81 years to repay. “In a moment of temporary crisis we handed the country over to the British, now we’re doing the same with China,” Carrió said during the congressional debate.

“This agreement will mortgage our future,” echoed opposition legislator
Margarita Stolbizer. Critics of the economic package say it is so
wide-ranging that it could compromise the country’s next president, to be
chosen in elections this October. The deal will “restrict the capacity for
governance of whoever takes office on 10 December,” Stolbitzer added.

Argentinian international analyst Felipe de la Balze said the base could
compromise Argentina’s international relations. “It could have military uses
of tremendous importance that could implicate our country in a future
military conflict between the US and China,” De la Balze told the TN news
channel.

The agreement is seen by some as the counterpart to an $11bn-loan
accorded by China last year that has helped to offset the dwindling
reserves of Argentina’s Central Bank.

“We are surrendering the future of Argentina’s development,” said opposition
legislator José Ignacio de Mendiguren, head of the UIA industrial union, the main association of Argentina’s business leaders. Mendiguren claims the agreement reduces Argentina to providing unprocessed commodities to China while Argentina will be buying value-added goods from the Asian giant.

China has also extended loans for two hydroelectric dams it will build in
Patagonia, among other projects. Argentina is the world’s third-largest
exporter of soy and China is it’s main buyer.

Critics have also pointed to a generous 50-year tax exemption for the base
and a 50-year lease to China of the 200 hectares (nearly 500 acres)
surrounding the antenna.

But Argentina’s space agency CONAE has dismissed the criticism saying that
Argentina has signed a similar agreement with the ESA European Space Agency
for a similar base in the Malargüe region of the western province of
Mendoza.

“This is part of the policies being instrumented by President Fernández to
insert Argentina into great projects of scientific and technological
development,” said Conae Secretary-General Felix Menicocci. In return for
the tax and land concession, Argentina will be allowed to use the antenna
for 10% of its online time.

For the people in the southern region of Patagonia, China’s space base
is nothing but good news. As the giant antenna, visible from long distances,
rises in the barren and wind-swept locality of Bajada del Agrio, 1380
kilometres (857 miles) south of the capital city of Buenos Aires, the 300
workers required for its construction have brought badly-needed economic
activity to the town of Las Lajas, some 50 kilometres from the project,
where the workers are located.