Global space summit takes place in Beijing

Industry officials and scholars gathered in Beijing on Thursday to attend the Global Space Summit.

The summit aims to look at ways to promote and coordinate global space exploration and ways of bringing China into the inner circle of space faring powers.

"Time will tell what type of cooperation we achieve in space. It is not just about improved use of human capabilities, knowledge and physics? it is about using limited resources to their best possible advantage", said Wu Zhou, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Astronautics (CSA).

China is one of only a handful of countries with an indigenous space programme. But the number is growing, most rapidly in Asia with the emergence of neighbouring India and Japan. There is the potential for a new space race or lunar race.

India, China and the US are all aiming to put people back on the moon by or around the year 2020.

China is eager to join international space efforts -including the International Space Station (ISS)- but existing members, in particular the US, are wary of a Chinese Space programme with such close ties to the Defense Ministry.

There is a fear that exchange of information will lead to the disclosure of military secrets and applications.

However, with increased potential for contributions and benefits from a growing Chinese programme and resource and budget pressures being felt by the established space programmes, the potential for cooperation is growing.

"We have had barriers in our relationship with China, those barriers trace back to security issues that we've had with each other", said John Hamre, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"That's starting to abate as we are starting to see the depth of the Chinese programme and there's an openness, their willingness to have this conference. So I think its going to be a slow process that opens up", he added.