Specifically, China currently lacks a carrier rocket powerful enough to get a crew to the moon. If they don't build their own, they'd have to do what the US did after retiring the shuttle program -- that is, ask the Russians for a lift -- or at least get America to spot them a go-round on the SLS. Of course, they'll also need to invent a lunar module as well as functional spacesuits for the time they're there.

That may sound like a good deal of work but if America could put a man on the moon back in the '60s in less than a decade -- which might as well have been the stone age by today's standards -- China, the economic and intellectual powerhouse that it is, shouldn't have much issue getting their program together in the modern era. That said, unlike NASA and the ESA, China's space program is notoriously secretive, which means we may not know if they're even capable of doing it until they actually do it.