This news is going absolutely viral in China.
Basically NASA has decided to make an exception to its 2011 "Wolf Amendment", which forbids NASA from communicating with China, in order to formally request permission to study recent Chinese moon samples.
People in China are like "are you freaking kidding me?": the US banned China from the International Space Station and then forbade any collaboration in order to kill Chinese progress in space exploration. As a result China had to re-learn everything on its own and, against all odds, succeeded: it's now the only country in history to have its own national space station and it's doing its own exploration missions in space.
But now that they have something that the US doesn't have - these recent moon samples - the US suddenly makes an exception and is happy to communicate. Even more unreal, in their request they have the guts to write this: "This allowance [to exceptionally communicate with you] applies specifically to Chang’e 5 mission samples; the normal prohibition on bilateral activity with PRC on Nasa-funded projects remains in place”. In other words, this is purely one-sided, we only make an exception because it benefits us... The entitlement is absolutely unbelievable!
https://nitter.net/RnaudBertrand/status/1731137252913492000
Ask the US that, they're the ones who unilaterally agreed not to work with China. It's fair for China to ask them to reverse that before cooperating.
You mean the US political class. NASA is the one sponsoring this blatant side step of the ban in a massive fuck you, in the name of science.
Plus NASA side steps the ban commonly. They usually send samples to Vietnam or Taiwan, and the samples “””accidentally””” ends up in Chinese hands. Who study and then return the samples.