China has been working on an indigenous synthetic aperture radar satellite for at least a decade. A few recent reports suggest that the China’s remote sensing program may have taken a great leap forward through the acquisition of advanced radar sensors with one meter resolution from a Russian source (other reports put it at twenty meters). If this is true, it would go far to solve the lack of advanced sensors that hampers the Chinese reconnaissance satellite program. Radar can see through clouds or rain and is particularly useful for maritime monitoring. This maritime mission is likely to be of high interest to the Chinese military, given the importance of Taiwan and the limits of their ‘blue water’ naval capability. Both the Russians and the Canadians developed radar satellites in order to monitor naval activity. China has some experience in the use of satellite data for ocean surveillance, as it has had access to Canadian RADARSAT data for several years and has operated a satellite maritime surveillance center for more than a decade.

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Lewis, James A. "China as a Military Space Competitor." Perspectives on Space Security. Ed. Audrey M. Schaffer. Washington, D.C.: Space Policy Institute, December 2005. [ 8 quotes ] [ page 98 ]