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Who is blocking China-U.S. space cooperation?

By Lin Xiaochun (China Military Online)    08:59, October 12, 2013
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BEIJING, October 11 (ChinaMil) -- In response to the incident that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States denied Chinese researchers' access to an astronomy conference, many heavyweight British and U.S. scientists recently expressed their dissatisfaction and called to boycott the conference. Under great pressure from public opinion, Frank Rudolph Wolf, a U.S. Congressman who imposed the ban, hastened to argue that it is the NASA that is to blame, for it "distorted" the scope of the ban.

In his open letter to Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., administrator of the NASA, Wolf shifted the responsibility for banning Chinese researchers from attending the astronomy conference onto the NASA. He asserted that the "Wolf Clause" does not ban activities by Chinese individuals "except official representatives of the Chinese government".

Wolf seems to be very innocent. Actually, it is Wolf, chairman of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, who inserted a clause named after him into the budget bill for the fiscal year 2011, banning any China-U.S. joint scientific research activities related to the NASA or coordinated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under the White House.

In his open letter to Bolden, Wolf, as usual, continued to violently slander China for the so-called theft of military and commercial secrets, and alleged that China would be provided with more opportunities for stealing secrets from the U.S. if the two countries seek cooperation in spaceflight. Besides, he also asserted that the management of the Ames Research Center (ARC) where the international astronomy conference was held was questionable during this incident and the center had become "a mouse hole with a series of improper and possibly illegal activities".

Some U.S. politicians have long been clinging to the Cold War mentality and prejudiced against China. Wolf is a representative of them. He repeatedly avowed that "China is an active and aggressive spy threat". In their eyes, all the people and companies from China can hardly avoid the suspicion of being a "spy".

In fact, it is at the instigation of Wolf and his ilk that the NASA's ban on Chinese scientists has been constantly tightened, and finally, all Chinese people have become unpopular and the China-U.S. cooperation in high-tech areas including space has always been blocked.

China and the U.S. are two important space powers in today's world, even as evidenced by the specially-developed plots in a Hollywood blockbuster entitled Gravity that U.S. astronauts use China's space vehicles. The two space powers need to enhance mutual trust and strengthen communication in space and related high-tech fields, which will benefit not only China, but also the development of both sides in such fields as space technology, space application and space science.

In the meeting with Barack Obama, president of the U.S, in June 2013 at the Annenberg Estate, Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California, Xi Jinping, president of the People's Republic of China (PRC), stressed that China and the U.S. should adopt a strategic and long-term perspective, keep the bilateral relations on the right track and steadily blaze a new trail of the relations between the two powers.

Undoubtedly, the "Wolf Clause" that bans China-U.S. space cooperation and the Cold War mentality behind the clause are a huge roadblock in terms of bilateral cooperation and mutual benefits. It's high time to remove it completely.



(Editor:YanMeng、Yao Chun)

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