It launched people into orbit, hasn't it? It's been much more successful than India, for instance. But you're right that compared to Russia its accomplishments are fewer. Perhaps it's just a matter of time.

Mars doesn't tell nearly the whole story, but this sticks out in my mind as an interesting infographic, notably devoid of any "India" lines. http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/images/4/2009/10/GoCGR.jpg

Note that China's mention is with Russia in that info-graphic. And here is the wikipedia page of that mission which clearly states that Chinese Mars obiter will be sent with Fobos-Grunt. While I don't discredit China of that but its a different thing to launch a satellite as opposed to sending your satellite on vehicle launched by some other country. FYI:

India's 'independent' mars mission is not far - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Space_Research_Organisat...

India's moon mission was the first one to prove the presence of water on moon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Water_discovered_...

People in the US used to (and still do) commonly say similar things about the russians.

What, that the Russians haven't innovated in aerospace?

Yes. Obviously that is false, but you still hear people say it.

That's amazing - not only because of the obvious history (Sputnik, Gagarin etc.) but also because of the fantastic ongoing success of their launch vehicles - Arianespace will be starting to launch medium loads from Guiana later this year using Soyuz launchers (in addition to the Ariane 5 heavy launcher and the Vega lightweight launcher):

http://www.arianespace.com/launch-services-soyuz/soyuz-intro...

For example, KITP in Beijing has some excellent Chinese astronomers. I am sure they can have collaborations with NASA scientists that would be mutually beneficial.

I realize this is not aerospace, but NASA is not just aerospace.