Battling in the High Frontier

Another part of the American Thinker post which drew my attention was this tidbit:

To top it all off, Europe has embarked an a completely unnecessary doubling of the US GPS system for navigation; since the GPS system is free to users all over the world, it’s like building a second world-wide web. The EU has invited China’s and Russia’s participation, but now China has learned enough about the system to withdraw in order to make its own.

As the article's author notes the GPS system built by the US is free to users all over the world. Why does China feel the need to invest the billions that will be required to build a completely redundant system?

If they believe that there should be a backup to the US maintained system in case of some highly unlikely failure then why not continue in partnership with the EU? After all why not spread the cost around?

Could it be that China is planning some kind of anti-satellite warfare that would leave the US without its GPS system? And if they are planning to take out our GPS system is it logical to believe that they will spare our communications and surveillance satellites?

Do we have a plan to protect our orbital assets?

Why do I think the answer is "NO"?