We are pleased to invite you to the next Science Silk Road Seminar. The seminar series is organized by the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project “China’s Science Silk Road and the New Geopolitics of Knowledge Production”, and co-hosted by the Berlin Contemporary China Network and the De:link//Re:link Research Consortium.
Moon Rocks in China: Tracing a Galactic Empire in Lunar Anthropocene
Feng Schöneweiß (MPIWG)
This paper examines the recent acquisition of lunar samples from the near and far sides of the Moon (2020, 2024) after successful missions of China Lunar Exploration Project (CLEP). It traces China’s galactic ambition through political and curatorial manipulation of lunar samples in museums and media, in the history of CLEP as a military-scientific dual mission, and in the upcoming onset of the Lunar Anthropocene with Chinese characteristics. In a comparative perspective of energy study, the paper considers the processual dimension of power density in the Chinese plan for a permanent lunar base. Eventually, the paper aims to situate the trajectory of China’s lunar exploration in the global system of science and the current trends of science policy.
Feng Schöneweiß is a historian of art and energy with expertise in crafted objects and built structures in late- and neo-imperial China. Feng earned his doctorate in East Asian art history with a graduate certificate in transcultural studies at Heidelberg University. At the moment, his research agenda focuses on energy literacy in a planetary history of art and technology. Within this framework, his current book project examines the extraction, consumption, and transition of energy in porcelain manufacture, lacquer craft, residential architecture, and lunar exploration.
Date: 18 June 2026
Time: 14:00-15:30 (CET)
Location: online / MPIWG, Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
The seminar series is sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project “China’s Science Silk Road and the New Geopolitics of Knowledge Production”, an international partnership between the Lise Meitner Research Group “China in the Global System of Science”, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and the Department of Political Science at Université Laval in Québec. Jointly led by Anna Lisa Ahlers, Han Cheng and Hang Zhou, the project advances one of the first in-depth analyses of China’s international cooperation on science, technology and innovation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).