President Putin's visit early this month was hailed by China's official news agency Xinhua as "a new chapter in the strategic cooperative partnership." During the visit, Putin said the two countries had the capacity to explore new areas for bilateral cooperation, such as energy, space technology and other high technologies.

In a lengthy joint statement signed by Putin and President Jiang Zemin on 2 Dec, China and Russia stressed their commitment to a "multipolar" world code for a world less dominated by the United States. They also complained that some governments have a "policy of double standards" on human rights, rejecting "the use of human rights issues as a lever for pressure in international relations."

Meanwhile, the Chinese media widely reported that the Harbin Institute of Technology will send about one kg of rice seeds to the Russian module on the ISS next year for a 6-month astroculture experiment.

The report indicates that Russia will lease room on ISS to China for the experiment although no detail about the deal is unveiled (the English translation of this report in China Daily and People's Daily has a blunder: the key word "Russia" is omitted).

This seed cultivation experiment will be China's first science investigation utilizing the ISS. The space plant breeding team at HIT has sent a variety of seeds into space via recoverable satellites and the Shenzhou spacecraft. To conduct long-duration experiment, however, researchers must use a space station.

As it prepares to send astronauts into space next year and launch a space lab in 2005, China is also making new overtures to join science operations on the ISS. Without China's participation, the ISS "is not a truly international program," CNSA administrator Luan Enjie told the Aviation Week & Space Technology last year.

Earlier this year, two Chinese higher education institutions, Southeastern University in Nanjing and Shanghai Jiaotong University, signed agreements with Nobel laureate Samuel Ting of MIT to participate in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer project to be conducted on the ISS.

Other Chinese research institutes also have been pursuing to secure a place for its space robot EMR on the ISS through different channels, according to a report in the China Space News in March. But there has been no response from the ISS project consortium so far.

To respond to China's desire to the ISS, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe expressed on 26 March, one day after the successful launch of China's Shenzhou-3, that NASA was interested in China's participation in the project.

He has reportedly had discussions with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on "the art of the possible" for future partnering agreements, and the issue might be further discussed at the heads of agencies meeting (See Leonard David, "Space agency chief: NASA at 'critical crossroad,'" Space.com, 11 April 2002.; "O'Keefe's vision: technology, not destinations, 27 March 2002.).

On 22 October, CNSA vice administrator Guo Baozhu met with NASA associate administrator for Earth science Dr. Ghassem Asrar, who went to Hangzhou to attend the 3rd SPIE International Asia-Pacific Environmental Remote Sensing Symposium 2002 sponsored by the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) and the Chinese Society of Oceanography (CSO).

During the meeting arranged by CNSA and NASA, Asrar said he hoped that the two agencies could have a long-term cooperation in the future, according to a report posted on the CNSA website last month.

However, Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of U.S. Congress subcommittee on space, ruled out any possibility that China would be admitted as a partner. "I don't want the world's worst human rights abusers to be an equal partner on the space station.

What do we need a bunch of Nazis running around the space station for?" he said (see Travis K. Kircher, "A Journey of a Thousand Miles: China's Manned Space Flight Effort," Ad Astra magazine, Sep-Oct 2002, p. 29).

Under the circumstances, China seems to turn to deal with individual partners of the project. So far, besides Russia, the European Union, Japan and Canada have all hinted that they are willing to lease room on the ISS to China for science experiments, according to a report in Beijing Youth Daily. This development indicates that it is impossible to exclude China from the inner councils of spacefaring nations forever.

As China and Russia are deepening their relations, the Russo-Chinese cooperation in space will certainly expand. If the US government continues to deny China's access to the 16-nation ISS project, it is likely that Russia would launch Chinese astronauts to the ISS, just like what it did for space tourists Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, after China realizes its Shenzhou human mission.

The United States could not contain China alone and there was scant prospect of support from other spacefaring nations. It's time for the United States to begin to work towards meaningful cooperation with China, said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University (See Leonard David, "China's Space Ambitions Keep Western Experts Guessing." Space.com, 8 July 2002,).

"It is only through engagement that we can transition from the Cold War era into an era of cooperation," said Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of the Department of National Security Studies at the Naval War College. (Testimony at joint committee hearing of the Committee on International Relations and Committee on National Security, 17 June 1998,).

Sibing He is Asia News Editor at Space Age Publishing Company, in Hawaii, and can be contact via sibingh@[email protected] - replace @nospam@ with a single @

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