International partnerships excluding the US

You’ve probably noticed that the new space race isn’t just about rockets anymore. It’s about who builds the rules, the hardware, and the partnerships that make long-term spaceflight possible. And right now, China is running a very specific play: building a network of international space agencies that excludes the United States entirely. If you’re tracking the future of space travel, you need to understand why China’s space machine is doubling down on agencies in Russia, Europe, Asia, and the Global South—and what that means for American ambitions.

The core driver is simple. China’s space program, led by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), wants to establish itself as the dominant power in cislunar space and beyond. But it can’t do that alone, and it won’t do it with the US. The 2011 Wolf Amendment, a US law that effectively bars NASA from working directly with China, forced CNSA to look elsewhere. That “elsewhere” has become a deliberate strategy: build partnerships with agencies that are willing to share data, launch payloads, and co-develop missions, all without Washington’s approval.

The most visible example is the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). This is China’s answer to the US-led Artemis Accords. While Artemis has attracted 30+ signatories including Japan, Canada, and European nations, the ILRS is a China-Russia-led project that has already signed up Venezuela, South Africa, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan. These aren’t just symbolic handshakes. The ILRS calls for actual joint missions, shared infrastructure on the lunar surface, and coordinated robotic and crewed landings. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, is providing heavy-lift launch capability and expertise from Soviet-era lunar programs. For China, this is a direct counterweight to NASA’s Gateway station and the Artemis base camp.

But the partnership game isn’t limited to the Moon. China’s Tiangong space station, now fully operational, actively welcomes foreign agency experiments. The European Space Agency (ESA) has already flown astronauts to Tiangong, though ESA has since paused some joint work due to political tensions. Still, CNSA has onboarded payloads from Germany, Italy, France, and Sweden. More tellingly, China is training astronauts from developing countries—Pakistan is slated to send the first non-Chinese taikonaut to Tiangong. This is soft power with a hard edge: every agency that works with China gets access to a sovereign space station without going through US export controls.

Then there’s the commercial and scientific tie-ups. The China National Space Administration has active cooperation agreements with the space agencies of Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, and Thailand. These aren’t theoretical. Brazil’s space agency has co-developed Earth-observation satellites with China. Egypt has a satellite assembly and integration facility built with Chinese help. Thailand recently signed for a Chang’e-7 lunar mission payload. Each agreement sends a signal: you don’t need NASA or the US State Department to participate in deep space exploration.

Why does this matter to you, the guy who just wants to know when we’ll have a Moon base or a Mars colony? Because agencies are the scaffolding of this future. They control launch windows, funding cycles, and safety standards. If China’s network of non-US agencies becomes the standard operating system for lunar operations, American companies and astronauts will face a fragmented regulatory environment. Private US firms like SpaceX or Blue Origin may find themselves locked out of certain orbits or lunar zones simply because the governing agreements were written by CNSA and its partners.

There’s also a timeline factor. The US Artemis program aims for a crewed lunar landing in the late 2020s, but it’s already facing delays and budget overruns. Meanwhile, China is planning its own crewed landing by 2030—and it’s doing it with agency partners who have already demonstrated cooperation on the ILRS and Tiangong. If China lands first with a crew supported by Russian, Pakistani, and European agency expertise, the narrative of “who leads in space” shifts dramatically.

None of this means US dominance is dead. NASA still has the deepest pockets and the most advanced deep-space hardware. But agencies matter in a different way now. They are the diplomatic currency of the space age. China recognized this early and built a parallel system. The US, by isolating China, inadvertently forced it to create a rival agency network that is self-consistent, growing, and increasingly appealing to nations that don’t want to pick a side in a US-China rivalry—but will pick the side that offers actual hardware and training.

If you’re following SpacePilgrim for the straight dope on where space is heading, watch the agencies. Watch who signs with CNSA versus NASA. Watch who flies experiments on Tiangong versus the ISS. The rockets get the headlines, but the partnerships that survive decades of political shifts will decide who gets to stay in space.