In the year 1970, China launched its first satellite, which was more than a decade after the Soviet Union kicked off the space age with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The Chinese space program though has come a long way from 1970. In 2003, China became the third country in the world(behind the Soviet Union and the United States) to send a man in orbit around the Earth. Later, the Chinese launched the Chang’e 1 and Chang’e 2 probes into lunar orbit and the Chang’e 3 and Chang’e 4 probes landed on the surface of the moon(with the Chang’e 4 being the first probe to do so on the far side of the moon). In the future, China plans to return a sample of the moon on the Chang’e 5 mission which is to start in December of 2019. This mission will be significant because of the fact that the last time a mission successfully brought back samples from the lunar surface was back in 1976 with the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission. The Chinese have also done carried 39 orbital launches which is the most conducted by any country in the world.

Now, Chinese officials have announced that they might send a manned mission to the moon. Because of the fact that the Chinese leadership highly values doing missions that have never been done before by other countries, it is likely that this manned mission will be something extraordinary such as having an extended stay at the moon, landing at the poles, sending the first woman to the moon, etc. This means that this Chinese mission would be much more than a replication of what had been done by NASA in Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s.

There is little reason to doubt that China will successfully pull off a manned mission to the moon. It is also very likely that China could do this before NASA does despite the fact that the United States has more advanced space technology. The reasons for this can be seen in China’s political and economic system.

The political will to carry out a manned mission to the moon is much larger than it is in the United States because America’s political system is subject to frequent changes in leadership every 4-8 years.

In addition to this, the Chinese economic system provides advantages that the American system doesn’t. The current Chinese economy is a socialist market economy in which public ownership of the means of production predominates, unlike America’s capitalist market economy where private ownership of the means of production predominates. The Chinese state heavily regulates the market and runs the economy according to five-year plans whereas the American economy does not have these. As a result, China’s socialist economy is able to avoid the anarchy of the market which the United States is vulnerable to as can be seen by the economic crises that happen every decade or so. In contrast, China has not seen a single economic crisis in the last forty years and has been the only country to do so in the world. This is important to note because of the fact that the typical response by capitalist countries in the world to these crises that plague the economic system has usually been massive reductions in government spending as well as austerity thus giving China the upper hand in sending a manned mission on the moon as the American economy faces another economic crisis looming over the horizon that will hit either by the end of this decade or the beginning of the next one.

It must be noted that a Chinese manned mission to the moon is not official and it is certainly not a race between America and China as to who can land on the moon before the other. The 2021-2025 five-year plan being prepared currently shows no indication of a manned mission to the moon. Thus, it is likely that the Chinese will not send a manned mission to the moon until after 2026. The country is in no rush to send people on the moon either as they are embarking on a long term program of sustainable development.

Some links to read more about the subject:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-us-vs-china-moon-race/

https://www.space.com/42914-china-far-side-moon-landing-crewed-lunar-plans.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-moon-landing-manned-mission-space-exploration-programme-lunar-programme-a7776566.html