Devolution of Space Mining Regime and China's Approach

The 2015 U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act explicitly established U.S. citizen's property rights towards mineral resources in celestial bodies, which started a new chapter in the evolution of space mining regime. In comparison to the slow progress within UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, states and non-state entities have gradually advanced the multifaceted development of domestic legislation and informal rules. There emerges the need for a holistic and dynamic reflection on the value orientation and approaches of this recent round of evolution, which not only helps to advance the improvement of space mining regime but also provides benefits for constructing a holistic framework and theoretical model for space mining governance with Chinese subjectivity. Over the past decade, the evolution of space mining regime has emphasized on granting and protecting the ownership of mineral resources in celestial bodies to ensure freedom to mining and maintaining benefit-sharing and environment protection obligations at the vague and outdated principles under Outer Space Treaty. The biased value orientation under a free-market ideology and devolutive democracy under hegemony promoted the legality of first-come, first-served space mining, which contradicts the global common nature of outer space and the internationalist tone of international space law. The corresponding approaches to rectify this deviation are reshaping the political climate of equity development, strengthening the democratic governing structure through the UN, and relying on framework convention to reconcile the binary opposition of treaty and non-binding rules.