In what some might call a page straight out of Cold War 2.0, NASA has maintained its longstanding policy of barring Chinese nationals from working on its space programs. Why? Because apparently, even outer space isn’t far enough to keep your intellectual property safe from the Chinese Communist Party.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t new. The ban stems from the Wolf Amendment, passed by the U.S. Congress in 2011, which prohibits NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from engaging in direct bilateral cooperation with China or Chinese-owned companies. The reason? Concerns over espionage, technology theft, and the CCP’s cozy relationship with surveillance, censorship, and state-backed hacking. You know—just the usual stuff.
Yet, in a world where international collaboration is the lifeblood of cutting-edge science, NASA has effectively drawn a thick red line when it comes to China. Not because of race or nationality, but because of a system that doesn’t believe in transparency, open research, or not stealing things.
Meanwhile, China’s been busy. The Chinese space agency (CNSA) has launched its own space station, is talking about mining the Moon, and sends rovers to Mars with state-funded confidence. But here’s the catch: it does so under a military-run space program that answers to the Central Military Commission, not a civilian agency like NASA. That’s like building a space observatory using the same folks who manage missile silos—and then asking why no one wants to share data.
Chinese state media will, of course, cry foul—call it “anti-Chinese racism” or “technological containment.” But the facts remain stubborn: China’s government has a well-documented habit of using international partnerships to extract proprietary research and funnel it back to Beijing. Ask Australia’s universities. Or Canada. Or anyone with a working firewall.
NASA, on the other hand, doesn’t just put up barriers—it puts out the welcome mat to international partners… provided their space agencies aren’t run by authoritarian regimes with a track record of cyber theft. Europeans, Canadians, Japanese, Indians—they’re all in the mix. The ban isn’t a xenophobic gut reaction. It’s a firewall against an authoritarian state that blends science, the military, and political surveillance into one seamless apparatus.
And let’s not pretend China would do differently. In fact, China bans open collaboration with NASA unless it can control the terms, the technology, and the narrative. CNSA’s version of “transparency” ends where the Party line begins.
So when critics lament that “Chinese scientists are being left out of humanity’s greatest space ventures,” they’re missing the real issue: Chinese scientists are not free agents. In today’s China, no research is just research. Everything is political. Everything is monitored. And nothing truly belongs to the scientist—it belongs to the state.
Until that changes, NASA’s policy will stand. Not because it wants to close doors—but because it knows exactly what happens when the wrong doors are left wide open.
