Overcome the Obstacles and There’s Considerable Room for US-China Cooperation in Lunar Exploration

The Chang’e 6 lunar mission successfully collected samples from the dark side of the moon and is returning from its business trip with an expected landing on June 25. Many nations are greeting this development with great attention and approval. Even NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has changed his tune and sent his congratulations to China, remarking on how the U.S. and China have productively collaborated in exploring Mars, among other efforts, noting that both parties have many opportunities to overcome conflict and be partners, and welcoming increased space dialogue and cooperation with China.

As the world’s two largest economies, China and the U.S. both regard space exploration as a key strategic deployment for national development. Since establishing relations in 1979, China and the United States have passed through several phases of cooperation regarding space in recent decades, from a partnership in launching commercial satellites to send American satellites into space to the joint creation of a space exploration working group for the earth and space sciences, and again to creating way for the two governments to engage in a civil space dialogue. The U.S. has prompted agencies in the two countries to establish an orbital data exchange program between China and America’s Mars probes, guaranteeing that Mars exploration missions in both countries can operate smoothly in the future. Overall, China and the U.S. have maintained a relatively high level of enthusiasm for partnering in civil and commercial space travel and scientific research.

However, the deeply entrenched consequences of Cold War ideology has caused American policy to be one of avoidance, even closed-off and adversarial with respect to Chinese space exploration, impeding China-U.S. space cooperation at every turn. In a 1999 Cox Report, the U.S. House of Representatives groundlessly accused China of stealing America’s missile technology through its commercial launches, thereby “endangering U.S. national security.” In 2011, America further hindered China-U.S. space cooperation by releasing the “Wolf Amendment,” which prohibits NASA from using any federal funding for bilateral partnerships or exchanges with the Chinese government or Chinese state-owned enterprises, including scientific research projects, conferences, visits, etc. NASA faced backlash at one point in 2013 from American researchers when it banned Chinese scientists from attending academic conferences. American scholars felt this kind of targeted discrimination was an entirely unfortunate political issue that damaged ties between Chinese and American researchers.

Realistically speaking, America’s efforts to isolate China have failed. Chang’e 6 carried international payloads from the European Space Agency, France, Pakistan and other countries, all of which participated in collaborative scientific research with China. The China National Space Administration released guidelines last October for distributing Chang’e 5’s lunar samples and announced opportunities to collaborate on the Chang’e 8 mission. A mere month after China’s invitation to all scientific researchers, including Americans, NASA lobbied Congress to allow researchers to bypass the “Wolf Amendment” and apply for China’s lunar soil research program. NASA asserted that analyzing these lunar samples could lead to new scientific insights about the moon’s geological history that would inform future lunar exploration plans. It is evident that domestically, America clearly recognizes the value of Chinese-U.S. space collaboration and has expectations to resume that work. All that stands in the way is the self-imposed stumbling block American politicians continue to impose and use to wall themselves off from the wide expanse of opportunity to collaborate on space exploration.

If the U.S. would eliminate the policies and legal restrictions, including the “Wolf Amendment,” and actively pursue collaboration with China, it would not only directly promote the technological progress of human lunar and deep-space exploration, but it would also accelerate global scientific research collaboration for the good of humanity in several ways. First, as leading nations in aerospace development, China-U.S. collaboration would bring together the world’s top talents, technologies and resources. This would dramatically increase the speed of lunar soil analysis and research, thereby catalyzing a profound understanding of the history and evolution of the moon, Earth, and even the solar system. Second, scientific research collaboration would facilitate the exchange and innovation in both countries when it comes to acquiring and analyzing samples and enhance the development of more efficient and precise tools, the spillover effects of which would benefit medicine and material science, among other fields. Third, China-U.S. collaboration in the field of space could set an example for the international community by showing the prospect of having two great nations meet each other halfway, especially in the context of our increasingly complex global environment. And last, the breakthrough results of bilateral collaboration could ignite global public interest in space exploration, especially among the youth. This would encourage more young adults to invest in studying science, technology, and engineering, among other fields, and pledge their talent to pursuing the dreams of humanity.

The author is the planning director of the China Aerospace Industry Imaging Center.