No room for nationalism in space

Unreasonable queries are being raised online ever since Wentian, the first lab module of China’s space station, successfully docked with the core module, Tianhe, on Sunday.

On Quora, someone said that only the Chinese language is used on the spaceship and asked if the country is “super-sealed”, and if they are getting rid of scientists from other countries by using a non-international language.

That’s an illogical surmise, given that any emergency in space would require the astronauts to make quick responses, preferably in their mother tongue.

Even the International Space Station uses English and Russian in its operating systems. So why should the use of Chinese by Chinese astronauts in the Chinese space station raise eyebrows?

Besides, how can one say that Chinese — the language that has the most native speakers in the world — is not an international language? According to the Ministry of Education, in September 2020 the number of people learning Chinese outside China had reached 200 million, with over 4,000 colleges, 30,000 primary and secondary schools, and 45,000 training agencies having opened Chinese language courses.

Also, anybody who has visited China or has a Chinese friend will disagree that China is “supersealed”, even more so if the comment is limited to the space exploration sector. After all, China has been calling for international cooperation in space. In June 2019, China accepted applications from 17 countries and 23 entities for carrying out experiments at its space station. There will be more such candidates as construction of the space station surges ahead. Therefore, referring to China as “supersealed” is a typical example of Western bias, which they would do well to give up.