China builds what America only dreamed: How Beijing beat US to a global missile defence network

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on September 18, 2025 shows, L/R, Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on September 4, 2025 and US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on September 16, 2025. Trump and Xi are scheduled to talk via phone on September 19, 2025. (Photo by Lintao Zhang and SAUL LOEB / various sources / AFP)

The world has just seen a stunning twist in the race for missile defence technology. For years, the United States imagined itself as the country that would one day build a shield to protect humanity from nuclear attacks. It spent decades designing what it called a “space-based missile defence system” that could stop any launch anywhere on Earth. But while America kept planning, China quietly went ahead and built one.

Beijing’s new system, described as a “distributed early warning detection big data platform,” is not just a test concept. It is a real, working prototype of a global missile defence network. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) didn’t wait for global agreements or endless discussions. It built, tested, and deployed. Now, China has something that the United States only talked about: an operational missile shield.

The US once called its own vision the Golden Dome, a grand idea for a planetary defence network announced by Donald Trump in 2025. It was meant to use satellites, artificial intelligence, and space-based sensors to track and destroy incoming missiles. But even now, the project remains stuck in design meetings and budget debates. As one senior official, US Space Force General Michael Guetlein, admitted in July, nobody in Washington really knows what the final structure of the Golden Dome should look like. “Objective architecture,” he said, “is still unclear.”

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists have already moved far ahead. Li Xudong’s team at the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology, one of China’s biggest defence research centres, says their system can track up to 1,000 missiles fired at China from anywhere on Earth at the same time. It uses data from satellites, radar stations, aircraft, and naval sensors to follow every potential threat in real-time. Each missile, warhead, or decoy is tracked, identified, and analysed before it even reaches Chinese airspace.

What makes this system so powerful is not just its scale, but its design. It does not depend on a single radar or command post. Instead, it connects many smaller systems into one massive network that shares data instantly. “Distributed early warning detection” means that even if one part of the network is destroyed or jammed, the rest keeps working. China’s engineers call it “physically dispersed, logically unified.”

Rather than building everything from scratch, the PLA found a smarter approach. It linked together old and new equipment through advanced communication protocols, allowing every radar and sensor to act like part of a single brain. Even if there is heavy electronic jamming or a blackout on the battlefield, the network keeps transmitting information and guiding defences.

In contrast, the United States is still stuck at the drawing board. The estimated cost of the Golden Dome project varies wildly --from £140 billion to several trillion -- and no one can agree on what it should look like. Washington is still debating while Beijing is already testing.

The difference between the two countries is now clear. For decades, the United States led the world in defence innovation, and China followed its lead. But that pattern has changed. This is not just about technology; it is about speed, direction, and confidence.

China’s new system may not yet be perfect, but it marks a shift that Washington cannot ignore. The monopoly on missile defence -- once an American stronghold -- has been broken. In building this global network, Beijing has sent a clear signal: the future of missile defence might no longer be made in the United States.