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A Chinese official expressed willingness to cooperate with the United States in space exploration, interest that appears unlikely to be reciprocated.

Speaking at the Beyond Earth Symposium here Nov. 13, Zhou Guolin, minister counselor for science and technology at the Chinese Embassy here, said China was open to some level of cooperation with the United States on spaceflight, without going into specifics.

“China welcomes participation from space agencies all over the world, including the United States of America, of course,” he said. “History has proved that isolation is not a solution, and that cooperation is the only solution to go forward.”

Interaction between NASA and China has historically been limited. It includes a 2006 visit by then-administrator Mike Griffin to China as well as working group meetings from 2008 to 2010 on topics such as the exchange of Earth and space science data. That was largely severed with the passage by Congress 2011 of the so-called “Wolf Amendment” that sharply restricted bilateral cooperation between NASA and Chinese organizations.

The Wolf Amendment has persisted in annual appropriations bills since 2011 with little effort to remove or significantly change it. NASA’s current administrator, Bill Nelson, told a House committee in 2023 he supported the provision.

“I think the Wolf Amendment, as it’s written, is adequate,” he said in an April 2023 House appropriations hearing. “I think the Wolf Amendment is sufficient for where it is right now.”

Nelson has, on other occasions, warned of China landing humans on the moon ahead of NASA’s own human lunar return, suggesting that China might lay claim to desirable locations at the lunar south pole and prevent NASA from accessing them. He also used an image from China’s Zhurong Mars rover at a 2021 House hearing to warn the U.S. “about our need to get off our duff” on lunar exploration.

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