CNSA is an agency created in 1993 when the
Ministry of Aerospace Industry was split into CNSA and the
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The former was to be responsible for policy, while the latter was to be responsible for execution. This arrangement proved somewhat unsatisfactory, as these two agencies were, in effect, one large agency, sharing both personnel and management. As part of a massive restructuring in 1998, CASC was split into a number of smaller
state-owned companies. The intention appeared to have been to create a system similar to that characteristic of
Western defense procurement in which entities which are government agencies, setting operational policy, would then contract out their operational requirements to entities which were government-owned, but not government-managed. Since the passage of the
Wolf Amendment in 2011,
NASA has been forced by Congress to implement a long-standing exclusion policy with CNSA ever since, though this has been periodically overcome. In 2021, China began building the
Tiangong space station, which consists of three modules designated for crew, cargo, and research. The construction was completed in late 2022, and there are plans to add an additional three modules. In 2024,
China announced that it will undertake 100
space missions, a significant increase from the 70 missions conducted in 2023. This is mostly satellites, testing, crew replacement, cargo, and more. == Function ==