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“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.”