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China

Back and Forth on Friends and Foes

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 22, 2006

Lunar panda-huggers, Washington Times

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican and senior member of the Science Committee, said he opposes the plan to send Mr. Griffin to China. “It is mind-boggling that the administration would even consider cooperating with China on space or any other technological endeavor,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. “The People’s Republic of China continues to hide its military buildup, oppress its people, violate international labor standards and do business with rogue regimes such as Iran and Sudan.” Space cooperation with Beijing likely will produce “the transfer of technology which will strengthen them and threaten us.”

Editor’s note: Hmm… and Rep. Rohrabacher was one of the loudest voices behind passage of the Iran Non-Proliferation Act (as it related to similar issues with Russia) and then a few years later he was one of the loudest voices calling for its retraction – admitting that it was a mistake. We’ll check back on his stance vis-a-vis China in a couple of years.

This is not to detract from the valid points Rep. Rohrabacher makes (at the present moment). The problem with the U.S. – and how the rest of the world views our stance on such issues as they relate to technology transfer (ITAR etc.) – is that we never we seem to speak with one voice, that this voice regulary flips polarity on the point it seeks to make from one country to the next; and often does so – with different countries – with similar bad habits – at the very same time.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.