After Saigon fell on 30 April 1975, ending the Vietnam War, the military purpose of Project 523 subsided. Researchers could not publish their findings but could share their works within the working groups. The first publication in English (and thus circulated outside China) was in the December 1979 issue of the Chinese Medical Journal, authored simply by the Qinghaosu Antimalaria Coordinating Research Group. This attracted collaboration with the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, and WHO, but the research remained closed to non-Chinese scientists. By the early 1980s, research had practically stopped, and the project was officially terminated in 1981. The TDR took this opportunity to organise the first international conference in Beijing on artemisinin and its variants in 1981. Supported by WHO, the Chinese Ministry of Health established the National Chinese Steering Committee for Development of Qinghaosu and its Derivatives to continue the important achievements of Project 523.
The first international collaboration was between Keith Arnold at the Roche Far East Research Foundation, Hong Kong, and Chinese researchers Jing-Bo Jiang, Xing-Bo Guo, Guo-Qiao Li, and Yun Cheung Kong. They made their first international publication in 1982 in The Lancet, in which they reported the comparative efficacy of artemisinin and mefloquine on chloroquine-resistant Plasmodium falciparum. Arnold was among those who developed mefloquine in 1979 and was planning to test the new drug in China. He and his wife Moui became the most important people in translating the historical account of the Project 523 and bringing it to international recognition. The Division of Experimental Therapeutics at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, under the United States Army, was the first to produce artemisinin and its derivatives outside China. Their production paved the way for commercial success.