History
Although China's space program has existed since 1956, CNSA is a relatively new agency created in 1993 when the Ministry of Aerospace Industry was split into CNSA and the China Aerospace Corporation (CASC). The former was to be responsible for policy, while the latter was to be responsible for execution. This arrangement proved somewhat unsatisfactory, as these two agencies were, in effect, one large agency, sharing both personnel and management.
As part of a massive restructuring, in 1998, CASC was split into a number of smaller state-owned companies. The intention appeared to have been to create a system similar to that characteristic of Western defense procurement in which entities which are government agencies, setting operational policy, would then contract out their operational requirements to entities which were government-owned, but not government-managed.
Read more about this topic: China National Space Administration
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)