China must hardwire long-term scientific endurance into its national strategy if it intends to shape the future of space discovery, a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist has suggested.
Reinhard Genzel, a German astrophysicist, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way. Before that, he was awarded the 2008 Shaw Prize in astronomy.
During a four-day event organized by the Hong Kong Laureate Forum that concluded on November 8, Genzel told Asia Times in an interview that although Beijing has invested heavily in space projects in the past decade, it must convert technological momentum into institutional permanence or risk falling behind in a new global contest where longevity outweighs velocity.
“You have a government which is willing to support scientific research, but will they be willing to support it for a very long time, a sustained effort?” Genzel said. “You have to build up a structure that can make that case.”
He stressed that scientific ambitions require institutions built to outlast political cycles.
Genzel is also a co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been both an observer and architect of international space science collaboration, having worked across continents and institutions that rely on governance models designed for long-term, cross-border scientific alignment.
His commentary arrives at a moment when China has dramatically expanded its national research footprint, particularly in radio astronomy, lunar exploration, deep-space observatio and astrophysical infrastructure.
Asked about global competition, Genzel said the era when the US singularly steered space science, fueled by Cold War investment and strategic rivalry, has now given way to a more distributed landscape.
“We had a US century. China is making very strong strides to follow. Europe has done well, too, especially since we learned to collaborate, not think in terms of ‘I want my own thing,’” he said.
Genzel said Europe’s progress had been driven by the cooperative frameworks forged during the Cold War, when shared science initiatives proved more effective than isolated national efforts.
“One clever thing coming from the Cold War is that we learned to work together internationally, not as nations competing alone. Otherwise, you could have never done anything,” he added.
Amid intensifying strategic competition, Beijing has recently signaled a stronger push for technological self‑reliance under its upcoming 15th Five‑Year Plan (2026–2030), which prioritizes long‑term scientific and innovation capacity. Full details of the plan are expected to be unveiled in March 2026.
This comes as US policies continue to restrict direct space collaboration. The Wolf Amendment, enacted in 2011, bars NASA and other agencies from bilateral cooperation with China without congressional approval, excluding the country from the International Space Station (ISS) and the Artemis lunar program.
China’s radio telescope
Regarding China’s rapid advances, Genzel struck a pragmatic but optimistic tone on the role of collaboration and competition.
“How about worldwide collaboration? We’ve tried this now. In some cases, it’s not always easy, because if the political and structural interests of the partners are too far apart it becomes very difficult to make decisions,” he said.
“Of course, China will and can move forward. The big FAST (Five‑hundred‑meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope) telescope is already one example, and its space experiments are already very impressive.”
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is located in a natural basin in Guizhou Province, China. Photo: Xinhua
The FAST telescope, completed in 2016, is the world’s largest single‑dish radio telescope. Known as the “China Sky Eye,” the facility is designed to detect faint radio signals from deep space, search for pulsars, study gravitational waves and support the global hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Since operations began, FAST has discovered more than 1,000 new pulsars, surpassing the number found by all other international telescopes combined in the same period. Its findings include a record‑breaking binary pulsar with a 53‑minute orbit and a rare eclipsing millisecond pulsar, offering critical data on stellar evolution, compact binary systems and gravitational wave research.
Asked specifically about FAST’s scientific potential, Genzel offered a technical but measured assessment.
“In radio astronomy, to get emission at such long wavelengths, you typically need non‑thermal processes, which refer to very high‑energy electrons moving in magnetic fields,” he said.
“For me as an astrophysicist, it’s not just seeing the signal. The real challenge is interpreting the signal in terms of physics. That becomes easier when you have thermal emission, which we see more in optical or infrared,” he said.
“This is not criticism. FAST will be very important, especially for fast radio bursts and transient radio sources.”
Genzel’s own scientific work reflects the cross‑border cooperation he advocates. He disclosed that MPE has built active research links with Chinese institutions, including formal collaboration with the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University.
“We have started a very strong collaboration with Professor Luis Ho in Beijing,” he said. “Several of his students have become postdocs in our group, and others have now joined. It’s really a wonderful collaboration.”
Astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel discusses the future of astronomy during his presentation. Photo: Asia Times, Jeff Pao
Genzel framed international participation as a strategic necessity, not diplomacy.
“Does the Chinese government prefer to have their own triumph with their own mission, or do they want to be part of a bigger, international mission?” he said. “If you go to a bigger mission, you cannot claim this was you alone. You have to accept that it has been work together.”
Genzel said the scale of next‑generation science is outgrowing national budgets and political cycles. He cited NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as an example that “nearly failed several times” before launch and sits at “the limit of what the US can deliver for basic research.”
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He said it will be too expensive for China to repeat such missions alone and warned that the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) in Chile is “at the limit of what Europe can do,” signalling that future projects will require multinational backing.
Europe’s next giant leap
Genzel shared a glimpse into the ELT, Europe’s ambitious next-generation observatory in Chile, while addressing 200 young scientists from all around the world at the forum, sponsored by the Lee Shau Kee Foundation.
To explain the complexity of the technology behind it, he highlighted the ELT’s four powerful ground lasers.
“We send four laser beams into the upper atmosphere to create artificial stars,” he told the audience. “Those guide stars allow us to measure how the atmosphere distorts light, and then we correct for that distortion in real time. Without that, the image is blurred. With it, we can reach incredible sharpness.”
The four lasers are essential because Earth’s atmosphere constantly warps incoming starlight. By tracking the artificial stars, the telescope can mathematically cancel out the turbulence, much like the way noise‑canceling headphones remove background sound.
When operational, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will gather 13 times more light than today’s most powerful telescopes and achieve images many times sharper than those taken from space.
“This will let us look at the earliest galaxies, test gravity near black holes, and even study planets around other stars,” Genzel said. “It’s a step only possible when countries work together for the long term.”
The ELT is scheduled to achieve “first light” in March 2029, with scientific operations expected to begin in 2028.
Read: China’s dual-use asteroid-collision research threatens satellites
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3
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