China's Global Missile Defense System: Outpacing Trump's Golden Dome Project

China has developed a groundbreaking missile defense system with global coverage capabilities. Known as the "distributed early warning detection big data platform," this system bears resemblance to the Golden Dome project proposed by President Donald Trump in the United States, according to The South China Morning Post.

Although still in early development stages, the Chinese system reportedly possesses the capability to simultaneously monitor one thousand missiles launched at China from any location worldwide.

The concept of comprehensive missile defense has historical roots in American military strategy. In 1983, during the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, President Ronald Reagan introduced the 'Strategic Defense Initiative,' commonly called "Star Wars."

In his March 23, 1983 address, Reagan envisioned "a system that could intercept and destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles before they reach our shores" and "protect our cities and our people from nuclear attack." Despite this ambitious vision, Reagan's initiative never became operational, and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

Donald Trump later revived similar aspirations. In May 2025, Trump proposed the 'Golden Dome' missile shield, a multilayered defense system for the United States with an estimated cost of $175 billion. According to Reuters, this defense system would comprise four layers—one satellite-based and three land-based—with eleven short-range batteries positioned across continental America, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists have reportedly deployed a working prototype of their global defense system. The South China Morning Post reports that this system utilizes various sensors positioned in space, oceans, air, and on land to identify and analyze potential threats.

This appears to be the first known missile defense system achieving planet-wide coverage, developed and deployed by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The prototype collects critical data in real-time—including light trajectories, weapon types, and warhead verification—to guide interception systems.

Scientists at the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology, China's premier R&D center for defense electronic systems, stated in a peer-reviewed paper published September 2 in Modern Radar journal: "The prototype system can achieve distributed parallel scheduling of up to 1,000 data processing tasks across nodes."

They further explained that the system "has been tested across multiple early warning and detection system nodes, achieving unified collection, processing, integration and analysis of fragmented, isolated and multi-format early warning and detection data." The resulting data significantly enhances comprehensive management capabilities for PLA headquarters.

In contrast, the American Golden Dome program, which aims to create an AI-enabled integrated missile defense network spanning multiple domains, has yet to establish a clear technical architecture.