E se...

...a ascensão não for tão pacífica como [a China] nos tem assegurado?
Si la Chine s'eveille le monde tremblera! terá dito Napoleão.
No Space.com

In a unique case of space bumper cars, two pieces of rocket hardware have collided high above Earth. The orbital run-in involved a 31-year-old U.S. rocket body and a fragment from a more recently launched Chinese rocket stage. The collision occurred on January 17 of this year, with the incident happening some 550 miles (885 kilometers) above Earth. That area of low Earth orbit (LEO) has an above-average satellite population density. The American and Chinese space hardware cruised through space in similar orbits at the time of the rear-ender.
The U.S. Surveillance Network of space-watching gear detected the collision, with the episode reported in the April issue of The Orbital Debris Quarterly News, a publication of the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.