Beyond US–China rivalry: Sino-American Space diplomacy in relation to satellite ground stations in the early Seventies

Under the current US–China strategic tensions, space cooperation between the two countries is also at a standstill. No funds can be used by NASA to work bilaterally in any way with Beijing, whose space technologies are perceived as a threat to US national security. Nonetheless, previous decades saw significant cooperation between the two countries, as extensively demonstrated by both Western and Chinese scholars, who have traced the origin of this cooperation to the end of the Seventies, when President Carter used space issues as a means to reinforce relations with the PRC. Less attention, however, has been given to the early Seventies, which can be regarded as the prelude to US–China space relations. In trying to fill this research gap, this article draws on US government declassified documents and American technicians’ memoirs to shed some light on this earlier period, by analysing the role of satellite ground stations in Nixon’s attempt to achieve rapprochement with Beijing. Furthermore, by making use of memoirs of Chinese officials and so-called ‘aerospace literature’ – a form of Chinese reportage-style writing mostly ignored and untranslated by Western scholars – this article also focuses on the CCP’s reaction to the US proposal, analysing the debate inside Zhongnanhai, where not everyone was willing to rent the US ground stations.