Commitment to open frontier reaffirmed: China Daily editorial

China's space station is due to receive its first foreign visitor. A Pakistani astronaut will join the Shenzhou XXIV crewed flight mission as a payload specialist, the China Manned Space Agency said on Saturday. This will be the first joint mission by Chinese and foreign astronauts in the history of the country's manned space program.

It is another concrete action demonstrating China's commitment that outer space should be a domain for cooperation, not another arena in which major countries divide the world into rival camps.

China and Pakistan signed an agreement in Islamabad in February 2025 covering astronaut selection, training and participation in Chinese space station missions. Following three rounds of screening, two astronauts were selected. Both underwent training and evaluation in China, with one being designated for the mission.

The cooperation is expected to help Pakistan develop its space science technical expertise and scientific research capabilities, and cultivate a new generation of professionals able to contribute to its own space ambitions.

Such cooperation will also help developing countries have a greater say in outer space governance.

Space exploration is becoming increasingly important to economic development, scientific discovery, climate monitoring, disaster prevention and national security. Yet access to its opportunities remains profoundly unequal. Countries with limited financial and technological resources often lack the infrastructure, expertise and institutional capacity to participate meaningfully. If the benefits of space exploration accrue mainly to those already equipped to reach orbit, humanity will have reproduced old earthly inequality in a new celestial domain.

China's position paper on strengthening outer space governance, released on Oct 23, identifies the unequal distribution of space capabilities and developing countries' limited access to space science and technology as major obstacles to the world's sustainable development. It points out that the achievements of space exploration should benefit all countries and calls for equitable access to outer space without discrimination.

The visit by the Pakistani astronaut to China's space station is a tangible expression of that principle. Cooperation encompasses not simply a seat aboard a spacecraft, but the entire process of selection, training, technical preparation and participation in orbital missions. It helps lower the threshold for developing countries to enter a field whose barriers to entry are otherwise formidable. More importantly, it helps developing countries build human capacity rather than merely providing them with a temporary service.

This is consistent with China's wider record of international space cooperation. The Beidou navigation system provides services in more than 140 countries and regions. Cooperation with some developing countries has gone beyond launching satellites to establishing satellite assembly, integration and testing capabilities. Chinese lunar exploration missions have also carried international scientific payloads, while lunar samples have been made available to foreign research institutions. Such initiatives reflect an approach that combines access to infrastructure with opportunities for scientific exchange and technological development.

While some Western countries are intent on militarizing outer space, China's position paper explicitly opposes the weaponization of outer space, or any action that turns it into a theater of conflict and the use of domestic legislation or unilateral sanctions to erect barriers against other countries' legitimate space activities. China also calls for the United Nations to remain the principal channel of global space governance, with developing countries given a greater voice.

The challenge facing the international community is not whether space will become strategically important; it already is. It is whether that importance will encourage competition without restraint or cooperation under commonly accepted rules. The two are not mutually exclusive, but security cannot be built sustainably by denying others the right to access outer space.

When a Pakistani astronaut boards a Chinese spacecraft, the significance will extend beyond the flags on the mission patch. It will show that a country need not belong to a traditional spacefaring club to participate in humanity's exploration of the universe. The heavens are vast enough to accommodate more than a handful of major countries. Making space a common good, rather than another geopolitical possession, is the more worthwhile mission.