The chapter shifts from Ye Wenjie’s personal recollection to a set of declassified Red Coast documents released years after she told Wang Miao the story. The first document argues that governments pay too much attention to slow, incremental scientific progress and too little to sudden technology leaps. It singles out the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as the field most likely to trigger the largest leap of all, and central authorities endorse that argument as strategically important.

The next report surveys international SETI efforts and frames them as a geopolitical danger as well as a scientific opportunity. It notes American projects such as Project Ozma, planned deep-space probes, and the Arecibo Observatory, while suggesting that the Soviet Union is also investing heavily in long-term radio astronomy. Because other powers are already sending messages into space, Chinese leadership concludes that China must also transmit, or extraterrestrials may receive only one-sided accounts of humanity.

The Red Coast Project is then formally defined. Its mission is to search for extraterrestrial intelligence and attempt contact, using specified monitoring bands, transmission frequencies, and a self-interpreting code built from mathematics and basic physics. The documents also outline the intended content of Earth’s message and stress caution about revealing Earth’s exact position in the galaxy.

The chapter next reveals political conflict over what humanity should say. An early draft of the message is crude Cultural Revolution propaganda, presenting China as the force of justice and denouncing an imperialist rival. Central leadership angrily rejects this approach, orders the Cultural Revolution leadership removed from involvement, and replaces the draft with a more polished message that praises human civilization, admits Earth’s flaws, and expresses hope for cooperation with alien societies.

The final policy notes show that Red Coast is valued not only as a strategic project but also as a way to think from a broader historical perspective. Leadership begins considering responses to both receiving a message and establishing contact. The closing remarks suggest a desire for an outside, neutral civilization to judge humanity itself, revealing an important ideological and philosophical motive behind Red Coast’s existence.