China's space station project and international cooperation: Potential models of jurisdiction and selected legal issues

China's manned space station project was officially approved in September 2010. Under a space development strategy at the state-level, an unmanned modular space station, Tiangong-1, was launched on September 29, 2011 and Tiangong-2 is scheduled to be launched in 2016. According to the China National Space Administration (CNSA), China is targeting 2022 for the orbiting of its space station, which will establish China as the third country that has independently constructed and operated a space station. In this article, the feasibility of different models of jurisdiction for this space station is examined, namely the Soviet Salyut, Sino-ISS, European Space Agency (ESA), and China-led models, which take into account the various factors that are not only limited to legal issues. After exploring the advantages and limitations of these models of jurisdiction, it is argued that due to legal, political, financial and technological reasons, a model of jurisdiction that is led by China is the ideal model for the impending space cooperations of China. Based on the above proposition, it is concluded in this article that China should be pragmatic towards space legislation in terms of space commercialization, and the most critical legal issues need to be given prior consideration, i.e. intellectual property protection, export control and dispute resolution mechanisms.