By John Fernando Muñoz | 2026-05-05

In an arid basin of the Neuquén steppe in northern Patagonia, Argentina, a remote area accessible only by dirt roads, a 35-meter-diameter, 450-ton antenna rises from the landscape.

This is the Deep Space Station, the first Chinese installation of its kind outside mainland China.

Since its opening in 2018, Beijing has presented the station as a milestone of Sino-Argentine scientific cooperation. Washington and several military experts see it differently.

Neuquén city councillor Nicolás Montero said local authorities know "absolutely nothing" about the Chinese presence or the work being carried out at the site.

"A country like Argentina, which is a peaceful country, must have full information because, beyond the fact that 200 hectares have been granted to China for 50 years, it remains Argentine territory," Montero said in a special report on the Chinese base broadcast by Argentine channel Todo Noticias in April 2024.

In the same report, security and intelligence specialist Andrei Serbin, president of the Regional Coordinator of Economic and Social Research (CRIES), said this type of technology has dual-use applications.

"Just as it can be used for space exploration, it can also be used to intercept communications or guide weapons systems," he told Todo Noticias.

"In the specific Chinese case, we find ourselves in a situation in which the highest authority controlling this network of space stations is the Chinese armed forces," he added.

Initial suspicion surrounding the Patagonian desert site has now hardened into a documented accusation.

The site is included in a report published in February by the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between Washington and the Chinese Communist Party titled, "Pulling Latin America into China’s Orbit."

The report concludes that Beijing has built an integrated network of dual-use space infrastructure in the region that strengthens the People’s Liberation Army’s capacity to monitor, track and potentially neutralize adversary military assets.

The architecture of espionage

The US congressional report details at least 11 Chinese-linked space facilities in Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Brazil, and warns that China has developed an extensive network of dual-use ground stations and telescopes.

These gather intelligence on military assets and strengthen the PLA’s warfighting capabilities, per the report, which references Chinese strategic documents, satellite imagery from Planet Labs, and traces corporate and military links.

The report posits that the so-called Space Silk Road, the orbital arm of China's Belt and Road Initiative, is not a benign technological development program, but a long-term strategy to extend the PLA’s global reach.

A review of Beijing’s planning documents, with open-source material on Chinese space infrastructure in Latin America, found China is using ostensibly civilian and commercial space cooperation to advance the PLA’s space domain awareness.

Space domain awareness is defined as the ability to detect, track and characterize all objects and activities in space.

To achieve this, China requires geographically distributed ground stations. Latin America, located in the opposite hemisphere from mainland China, offers coverage that Beijing cannot obtain from its own territory.

These installations are not simply isolated projects; rather, they form an integrated dual-use network that strengthens China’s ability to monitor, control, and potentially disrupt adversary space and military operations.

China's expanding presence

The Deep Space Station is the most visible symbol of this strategy.

The base ultimately depends on the Chinese military and features dual-use technology: beyond its scientific capabilities, the antenna also can be used for military purposes.

For this reason, the 200 hectares in Patagonia under the authority of Xi Jinping’s government have become a source of geopolitical friction with the United States and the European Union.

Both have repeatedly expressed concern about China’s expanding presence in the region.

Argentina signed a 50-year lease agreement with China in April 2014, without independent inspection mechanisms.

The congressional report states that the Neuquén antenna is operated by the Xi’an Satellite Control Center, which falls under the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC), itself linked to the PLA Strategic Support Force.

It also highlights a geopolitically sensitive detail: the base is located near the same longitude as the US East Coast and at a similar distance from the equator as Washington D.C., placing it in a favorable line of sight for most geostationary satellites serving the eastern United States.

Bolivia: leasing antennas to the PLA

The Amachuma Ground Station in Bolivia’s high-altitude plateau of Achocalla is positioned more than 4,000 meters above sea level.

Officially, it is the control center for Bolivia’s Túpac Katari satellite, built and launched from China in 2013. In practice, according to the US congressional report, it is another node in the PLA’s global network.

Bolivian Space Agency director Iván Zambrana acknowledged to the Washington Post that the facility leases spare antenna time to Chinese entities to support the launch and control of their own satellites.

Bolivian engineers were trained in China, and Chinese satellite operations personnel maintain a regular presence at the station, allowing PLA-linked staff to use its high-performance hardware for their own missions.

The station was built by the China Great Wall Industry Corporation with a $250 million Chinese loan, ensuring, according to the US report, a long-term Chinese technical presence until at least 2028.

Its 13-meter parabolic antennas operate across frequency bands used for both civilian and military purposes, while its satellite image processing laboratory enables remote sensing analysis that can be repurposed for military intelligence and terrain mapping.

Venezuela: base within a base

In Venezuela, China’s presence has a distinctive feature that the US congressional report highlights as particularly revealing.

El Sombrero station, operated by the Bolivarian Agency for Space Activities, is located within the Captain Manuel Ríos Air Base, an installation that serves as a maintenance base for the Venezuelan Air Force’s Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter jets.

When Venezuela joined China’s International Lunar Research Station project in 2023, Beijing gained formal access to El Sombrero’s control infrastructure.

The report notes that China’s technological deployment has created a strategic dependency and represents a direct challenge to security in the Western Hemisphere.

Chile shuts the door

A Chinese-backed astronomical data project in Chile came under increasing scrutiny over potential dual-use capabilities and security risks, eventually leading the Chilean government to cancel the initiative in 2025.

The China-Chile Astronomical Data Center in Santiago had been developed through a partnership between the China Academy of Sciences, Huawei, and the Federico Santa María Technical University.

The facility was designed to process massive datasets generated by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), using high-performance computing and AI systems to map galaxies and support advanced astronomical research.

ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence, is a telescope composed of 66 high-precision antennas located on northern Chile's Chajnantor plateau.

Experts warned that the same computing infrastructure and algorithms used to filter and analyze deep-space signals could be repurposed for military signals intelligence and data exploitation.

This could include intercepting and processing sensitive communications.

China’s expanding footprint in Chile’s Atacama Desert goes beyond this data center.

Ventarrones Astronomical Park and its Transient Objects Monitoring project, officially framed as a civilian effort to detect asteroids, relies on high-precision tracking technologies that resemble those used in satellite targeting systems.

Concerns grew further with the involvement of Jing Liu, identified as a chief scientist linked to PLA Unit 93147, a Chinese military entity specializing in satellite engineering and radar imaging.

The Chilean government’s decision to halt the project followed diplomatic pressure and national security concerns raised by the United States.

The Santiago Satellite Station in the Andes -- originally developed as a joint research site between the Swedish Space Corporation and China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control -- also has come under scrutiny.

Sweden allowed its agreements with the Chinese entity to lapse in 2020 after its defense authorities raised concerns that antenna access could be misused for intelligence gathering.

Brazil's space concerns

Tucano Ground Station, created via a 2020 agreement between Beijing Tianlian Space Technology and Alya Nanosatellites, is designed to provide high-coverage communications for space missions, including reconnaissance satellites.

Although presented as a commercial project, the partnership includes the storage and exchange of operational data through interconnected antenna networks, expanding coverage across multiple orbits.

This raises concerns about enhanced tracking and monitoring capabilities.

Those concerns are amplified by Alya’s agreement with the Brazilian Air Force, which includes training personnel and integrating military infrastructure as backup for the station.

In parallel, the China-Brazil Joint Laboratory for Radio Astronomy Technology, led by the China Electric Science and Technology Network Communication Research Institute, will develop advanced signal-processing systems under the framework of international scientific cooperation.

Experts warn that these technologies, while designed for astronomy, could also be repurposed to intercept and analyze sensitive military signals, underscoring the dual-use risks tied to China’s expanding space footprint in Brazil.

The US report concludes that China’s space strategy has evolved significantly.

Where cooperation once centered on basic scientific exchange, it warns, Beijing’s 2025 policy framework explicitly defines "space cooperation" as a pillar of national security.