news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Source: Global Times

[Global Times Special Correspondent in the United States Li Jun Global Times Reporter Fan Wei] Editor's Note: Recently, the US aerospace industry has faced many problems. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)'s main rocket "Falcon 9" disintegrated in space for the first time in more than 7 years and was grounded. The "Starliner" developed by Boeing in the United States failed and left two astronauts stranded in the International Space Station for more than a month. Before the start of the extravehicular walk mission, the space suit cooling device leaked seriously. In terms of lunar exploration, the lunar soil obtained by China's Chang'e 6 at the end of June has attracted great interest from American scientists and related institutions. However, a US domestic law called the "Wolf Clause" has greatly hindered a series of space cooperation between the United States and China, including joint research on lunar soil. Many US industry insiders have publicly criticized the clause as "paranoid" and "wrong", so why has the clause been retained in US legislation every year for the past 13 years? What is the prospect of equal and mutually beneficial space cooperation between China and the United States?

Former NASA director: The clause does not achieve its purpose at all

"Two paragraphs of text actually prohibit U.S.-China space cooperation." This is how the Wall Street Journal described the "Wolf Clause". The clause was passed in April 2011 and included in the U.S. Department of Defense and Annual Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2011. The two paragraphs of text stipulate that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy may not use the funds for any form of bilateral cooperation with China or institutions with Chinese backgrounds without authorization, and any agency under or using NASA may not use the funds to receive official Chinese visitors.Forbes magazine reported that the clause "reversed more than 30 years of constructive engagement between the United States and China" and that the harsh ban made people feel "almost paranoid."

NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, USA. (Visual China)

This "paranoid" can be felt not only in the content of the clause, but also in the remarks made by its proposer on China. The 85-year-old former U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf is the proposer of the clause, and the clause is named after him. He served as a Republican in the House of Representatives from 1981 to 2015. During his 34-year career as a congressman, Wolf was well-known for his tough anti-China stance and concern for human rights issues. He not only criticized China's "human rights issues" for many years, but also advocated that normalizing trade with China was "fundamentally immoral."

Frank Wolfe profile picture

Wolf's goal in proposing the clause was to seek a "permanent ban on any scientific collaboration between U.S. research institutions and China." He boasted at the time: "We don't want them (the Chinese) to have access to our technology, and dealing with them does us no good... China is spying on us, and every U.S. government agency has been attacked by cyberattacks. They are stealing technology from major American companies. They've taken NASA technology and hacked into computers at the National Science Foundation." In 2013, Wolf also claimed that he would "work to limit U.S. collaboration with China until we see improvements in China's human rights record."

Charles Bolden, former NASA administrator (served from 2009 to 2017), witnessed the entire process of the introduction of the "Wolf Clause". When participating in an online roundtable forum of the Secure World Foundation (SWF), he recalled that in 2010, before the clause was proposed, then-US President Obama asked him to go to China to meet with representatives of the China National Space Administration to assess the possibility of manned space cooperation between the United States and China. At that time, the US government "was very interested in bringing the Chinese to the International Space Station." Before the delegation set off, Bolden met with Wolf, because Wolf was the chairman of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee at the time, and NASA's funding was under the responsibility of Wolf. "He asked me not to go to China. In fact, he told me directly not to go to China."

However, the NASA delegation finally visited China in October 2010 in accordance with the president's instructions. They visited the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, the China Academy of Space Technology, the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, etc. Bolden said: "We can touch almost everything. At that time, the Chinese team was building Tiangong-1, and they also allowed us to go into the space capsule to take a look."

After Bolden and his team returned home, they submitted a complete and detailed report to Congressman Wolf. Wolf said at the time that he was "very grateful", but said that "NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will pay the price". That year, Wolf drastically cut the budget of the office. A related statement read: "The actions of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy show its lack of respect for the policies and oversight role of Congress."

More than 10 years have passed. Has the Wolf Amendment achieved its goal? Bolden said: "Wolf's goal at the time was to isolate China and make China closely abide by the human rights norms of the United States, but it did not achieve the goal at all." Speaking of his personal concerns, he said: "China has its own space program. In terms of economy and other aspects, the Chinese do not need us. Over time, China's space program may attract away American partners. This was my concern at the time." However, the Wolf Amendment also did not achieve the goal of preventing the development of China's space field.

US scholar: The reservation clause is "a bad idea in every sense"

More than a decade later, many people in the US aerospace industry have realized that the "Wolf Amendment" is actually just a self-defeating move for US technology. Although Wolf announced his retirement less than three years after the introduction of the provision, the provision has been retained in the appropriations bills of previous years, and has continued to hinder China-US cooperation in space for more than a decade. Makena Young, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, bluntly stated that retaining the provision is "a bad idea in every sense", it does not help promote human rights, and it also hinders NASA from maintaining its leading position in civilian space exploration.

Bolden recalled the scene when he visited China and said that when he saw that the interface of the Chinese space station adopted international standards, he thought about many things. Bolden said, for example, "at some point, we may need the Chinese to assist in rescuing astronauts, or we may need their help in other aspects." At that time, the NASA delegation assessed that it was possible to include China in the international space station plan, "There were several times when we thought we were about to succeed."

However, pressure within the United States has prevented China-U.S. space cooperation. This pressure comes not only from U.S. Congressman Wolf and others, but also from the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council. Bolden said that the U.S. State Department has been slow to make progress on visa issues. "Even if you brief Congress and get authorization, sometimes you can't get the Chinese to the United States to attend meetings in time because they are slow to approve visas," he said.

Some people in the U.S. aerospace industry hope and call for the removal or at least adjustment of the Wolf Amendment, but they face huge resistance.Bolden said human rights issues may have been Wolf's "inner driving force" at the time.Not only is Wolf himself passionate about human rights, but many of the congressmen around him are also obsessed with it. "We thought that when Wolf left the House of Representatives and Congressman John Culbertson took over the Budget Committee, he would reduce his support for the 'Wolf Clause'. But we found that Congressman Culbertson was even worse. He was paranoid about the Chinese. He didn't even want us to use any equipment containing Chinese components on the International Space Station. He didn't want us to bring anything from China to the International Space Station."Bolden said helplessly that at least Wolf was still committed to a human rights goal, while for Culbertson, "except for the fact that he didn't like China, we never understood why he opposed it."

According to the U.S. magazine Scientific American, John Logsdon, a professor at George Washington University and founder of the university's Space Policy Institute, believes that it is time for the United States to engage in closer space cooperation with China, perhaps starting with abolishing the "Wolf Amendment."But he also stressed that the issue "is a matter of policy debate, and retaining the 'Wolf Clause' every year is a convenient way to avoid political debate."He believes that the United States should use diplomatic and scientific channels to explore the prospects for future cooperation with China.

US experts: Banning cooperation will only leave room for competition

Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aviation Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times that if there were no "Wolf Clause", China and the United States could cooperate in basic research on aerospace-related technologies, engineering, and even important aerospace missions. However, due to the restrictions of this clause, normal academic exchanges are now affected, and even students majoring in aerospace at Beihang University and Beijing Institute of Technology face great obstacles in applying for US visas.

In Wang Yanan's view, the logic of American politicians and the government is becoming increasingly bizarre, and insisting on the "Wolf Amendment" has actually put the United States in an embarrassing situation.The background of the formation of this clause was that the United States believed that it was at the forefront of technology and China was at the downstream of technology. The restrictive clause could prevent China from obtaining important technological resources from the United States. But now, China is at the forefront of technology in some aspects of the aerospace field, and the United States is slightly behind. For example, in the issue of obtaining lunar soil samples, China's lunar sampling capabilities are not inferior to those of the United States. The lunar soil obtained by Chang'e 6 this time has filled the gap in the United States' lunar soil research. So the United States itself is now also a little uncomfortable with the "Wolf Clause".

"The International Space Station is down, and the Chinese Space Station is up." Victoria Samson, director of the SWF Washington Office, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January last year that after the International Space Station is retired, countries will need new places to carry out missions, and their preferred partner country may be China. "Today, the working environment on the moon is very hostile. Humans can help each other on the moon, but because of the relationship between the two countries on the ground, the relationship between people on the moon has become complicated. I think this is stupid." Samson believes that the "Wolf Clause" will still exist in US legislation for some time, firstly because no one in the US political circles is willing to spend political capital to promote the abolition of the clause, and secondly, the pendulum of US politicians' attitudes towards China continues to tilt towards "China is an enemy or threat".

Makena Young believes that China's economy, international influence and space strength have continued to grow over the years, and being excluded from US-led international space missions has not prevented China's development. This is "a strategic mistake (of the United States)."She said: "The 'Wolf Amendment' legally prohibits bilateral cooperation between China and the United States in the space field, which will only stifle mutually beneficial cooperation in science and exploration."

The technology news website "Futurism" also published an article saying that the US Congress's ban on NASA's cooperation with China "may be a mistake." For many years, the United States and China have been almost completely independent of each other in their plans to explore the moon and Mars, and the brief period of scientific cooperation was interrupted by political tensions. Namrata Goswami, an expert on space policy and international relations, believes that "banning cooperation will only leave room for competition."

When talking about international cooperation, Bolden said that although there are legal constraints in the United States, "we encourage our other international partners to cooperate with China to the greatest extent possible because they are not restricted." For example, Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti has participated in China's space mission training.

Wang Yanan told reporters that China and the United States actually have many complementary aspects in the lunar exploration mission, and these are opportunities for the two sides to cooperate.For example, building a long-term manned scientific research station on the moon in the future will require a large amount of financial, human and technical resources. It will be a huge burden for any country to bear independently, and international cooperation will be the trend of the future.

Bian Zhigang, deputy director of the China National Space Administration, said at a press conference that China has always been open to cooperation and exchanges in the field of space with the United States. The root cause of the obstacles to Sino-US space cooperation lies in domestic laws such as the "Wolf Amendment" of the United States.Bian Zhigang stressed: "If the US really wants to have normal space exchanges with China, I think they should take practical measures to remove obstacles."