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The worsening rivalry between the two most powerful countries in the world, which in recent years has spread across the globe, has now expanded beyond the earthly, into the realms of heaven.
Like China has become deeply embroiled in strategic competition with the U.S. — while moving toward outright hostilities with other regional neighbors — Washington’s anxiety about the pace of its progress in space is growing.
Beijing does not hide its ambitions and a a series of recent successful space missions showed that the government’s rhetoric was backed up by technological advances.
In Friday, China launches robotic spacecraft on a round trip to the far side of the Moon, in a technically challenging mission that will pave the way for an inaugural landing with a Chinese crew and a base at the lunar south pole. The Chanye-6 is intended to return samples from the side of the Moon that is permanently facing away from Earth.
Earlier this week, Shenzhou-18 was launched, Beijing’s latest crewed spacecraft mission to the Tiangong space station, which was developed after China was excluded from the International space station.
Along with the three tyconauts, among the crew was a live fish called “the fourth crew member”. The zebrafish is part of an experiment to test the viability of a large closed ecosystem including fish and algae to help humans live in space for long periods.
But collecting lunar samples and the viability of zebrafish are not the only focus of China’s space sector.
The speed of China’s ambitions has prompted concern from the government’s main rival, the US, about Beijing’s geopolitical intentions amid what the head of NASA called a new “space race.”
Last week, the head of NASA, Bill Nelson, said the US and China were “virtually in a race” to return to the moon, and he feared that China wanted to stake territorial claims.
“We believe that a large part of their so-called civilian space program is a military program,” he told US lawmakers.
There are concerns about China’s development of anti-space weapons, including missiles that can target satellites and spacecraft that can take satellites out of orbit.
“At the geopolitical level, China’s space ambitions raise questions about how it can use its space capabilities to further its regional and domestic political and military interests,” said Dr. Svetla Ben-Yitzhak, Deputy Director of the Scholars Program at the Johns Hopkins University Space West.
General Stephen Whiting of the US Space Command told reporters last week that China’s progress was “a cause for concern”, noting that it had tripled the number of spy satellites in orbit over the past six years.
“It’s the wild, wild west”
The US and China are indeed in a race, says Prof. Kazuto Suzuki of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy, but it’s not just about stepping on the moon, as during the Cold War. Rather, it is to find and control resources, such as water.
“It’s a race of who has better technical capabilities. China is quickly catching up. The speed of Chinese technological development is the threatening element [to the US],” he says.
Suzuki says international agreements don’t allow national appropriation of resources on the moon, but in reality, “it’s the wild, wild west.”
“In general, China wants to be first, so they have the right to dominate and monopolize resources. If you have the resources at your fingertips, then you have a huge advantage in the future of space exploration.
The US and China are leading the development of separate space station programs for the Moon. The U.S.-led Artemis program includes plans for a “Moon Portal,” a station in orbit around the Moon as a communications center and housing astronauts and a science laboratory.
But the Americans are “not so interested in owning the moon because they’ve been there,” says Suzuki.
“They know it’s not really a habitable place, they’re more interested in Mars.” So for them, the Lunar Gateway is sort of a gas station for the trip to Mars. If the Artemis program can extract water from the Moon, it can be processed to create rocket fuel from hydrogen and oxygen.
In contrast, China and Russia announced joint construction plans in 2021 shared research station on the surface of the moon. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) will be open to all interested international parties, they said. However, the US would hardly be among them given its bad relations with China and Russia.
Suzuki says the Sino-Russian station “should serve as the Antarctic research station,” which is within the rules of international space treaties. “But if it turns out to be a station to base its territorial claims on, then that’s against the rules.”
The US is gathering allies to ensure that China does not win the space race. Earlier this month, shortly after China announced its intentions to land a man on the moon, US leader Joe Biden and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida pledged to send an astronaut from Japan – China’s historic rival – to the moon on NASA’s Artemis missions. in 2028 and again in 2032.
But China is also gathering allies. It has partnerships or financial stakes in projects in the Middle East and Latin America and about a dozen international members for its ILRS.
But Ben-Yitzhak notes that there are some overlapping memberships. Furthermore, “no bloc has so far introduced exclusionary practices, which is promising.”
Ben-Yitzhak says the U.S. and China are indeed engaged in a race, but the term does not fully capture “the complex, nuanced dynamics that are currently unfolding in space, in terms of the diverse and increasing number of actors and initiatives, and there is no clear ultimate goal in sight”.
“The real challenge in space is not just reaching a particular milestone, like planting flags or collecting rocks; it’s about establishing a sustainable, sustainable presence in an incredibly challenging environment. It’s a test against our own abilities.”
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin
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