Less than a year after starting a company to develop Chinese aircraft engines, a leading aerospace expert and a battered Shanghai property developer launched China’s first high-altitude airship. They called it the “Dream Come True.”
That 2015 partnership between Beihang University Professor Wu Zhe and Shanghai Nanjiang Group Holdings, a company known for luxury villas and apartment buildings, came under global scrutiny last week. The entity they created — Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology Co. — was among six firms sanctioned by the U.S. for their alleged role in the Chinese military’s balloon program, which the Biden administration says is part of a global surveillance system.
China has a long history of fostering civil-military partnerships to make technological advances. And with the People’s Liberation Army interested in expanding its reach in the “near-space” region — a zone 20 kilometers (12 miles) to about 100 kilometers above the surface — the alliance made sense.
