(Kharbarhub) Thangavel K. Balasubramaniam, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Pondicherry University, India; and Ashok Kumar Murugesan is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Physics, Pondicherry University, have written an extensive review India Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs have written an extensive review of China’s rising missile and naval capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region.
IQT-NEWS is summarizing only the quantum technology section of this important article, but readers interested in security issues inherent in China’s military rise are encouraged to review the entire article.
In addition to the numberous defense technology developments covered by this authors, China is committed to developing quantum information technology for unhackable data transfer in cyberspace for secure communications. In August 2016, China launched the world’s first quantum satellite: the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS).
The following year, China successfully carried out the first communication by using quantum encrypted messages with entangled photons for secure communication.
This pioneering work led to the building of the world’s first quantum network between Beijing and Shanghai for secure communication.
Quantum encryption ensures that efforts to tamper with communications are instantly known by sender and receiver alike, using quantum key distribution, and alters the content of the message being sent.
China aims to build its quantum key distribution for quantum communication network by 2020 and for global communication by 2030.
Additionally, QUESS will be a useful to perform space-scale tests on photon teleportation experiments, establishing quantum networks at space-scale to transfer entangled photons for unhackable secure communication around the globe.
Chinese defense agencies will probably implement these developments in advanced quantum technology in the Strategic Support Force (SSF), combat control, ballistic missile defense (to identify the nature of warheads), and maritime navigation for naval ships.