China's Zhurong-3 Y2 rocket successfully completed its first land-based recovery, opening the door to dual-mode land and sea reusable launch systems.
After China achieved this historic breakthrough, foreign media reacted with envy.
A typical argument claims that this could not possibly have been accomplished independently by China—just as the Rosenbergs allegedly stole U.S. nuclear secrets and handed them over to the Soviet Union, it’s almost 100% certain that some Chinese spy (born in the U.S.) working at SpaceX must have stolen Elon Musk’s reusable rocket technology, since the Chinese themselves couldn’t possibly understand such advanced engineering.
Another so-called "evidence": China still struggles to produce DUV technology from nearly 20 years ago. They must import machines from ASML to manufacture any modern semiconductors. Clearly, intellectual property theft enabled them to achieve such a rocket landing.
Yet others point out that SpaceX cannot hire foreign nationals—it must employ only U.S. citizens, green card holders, or individuals with asylum visas; no other types of visas are allowed, regardless of where one was born.
Some even sarcastically claim that Chinese engineers couldn't possibly figure out how to land reusable rockets just 11 years after Musk and two years after Bezos. Everyone knows Chinese people are terrible at math, and are inherently lazy workers—plus, their laws of physics must be different from those in the United States.
Don’t they realize China isn’t in zero gravity?
But the fact is, China files more world patents annually than most countries—even if we’re not sure whether it’s number one.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1873997177840652/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.