Will China’s historic paper on Chang’e-6 lunar far side samples be in English or Chinese?

The Chang’e-6 mission’s cargo is expected to yield a wealth of research but debate is growing about what language it will be published in first

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An image of the surface on the moon’s far side, captured by a camera on board the Chang’e-6 lander as it descended on its historic mission. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 10:00pm, 18 Jun 2024Updated: 12:55am, 19 Jun 2024

With China’s Chang’e-6 mission on its homeward journey, carrying the first samples to be retrieved from the moon’s far side, the scientific community’s dream of discovering what secrets they hold is about to become a reality.

But in what language, and where, will the historic findings be written and published after the samples – scooped from the northeastern part of the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin on June 2 and expected to weigh up to 2kg (4.4lbs) – are analysed?

Within China’s scientific community, there persists a notion that publishing in English is not only a medium of communication, but also a bridge to global recognition. The use of Chinese remains taboo, a silent sacrifice at the altar of international acceptance.

Chinese scientists customarily pen their research findings in English, sharing them with the wider world through esteemed journals like Science magazine in the US or the journal Nature in Britain.

When China’s Chang’e-5 mission in 2020 retrieved the first lunar samples in decades from the moon’s near side, the first research was carried out by a joint team of Chinese and Western scientists and appeared in Science magazine in October 2021.

This was followed by three more scientific papers published by Nature in the same month, according to an editor with the Science China Press, a scientific journal publishing company of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), recalling the global sensation.