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China has upped the stakes in the competition to get to the moon. "It is a fact: We're in a space race," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said to Politico in an interview this month. He was talking about China, and he was clear about how he sees the threat: "We better watch out that they don't get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, 'Keep out, we're here, this is our territory.'"
Nelson has done a 180 on the topic. "That Bill Nelson, the current head of NASA and a former astronaut, has woken up to the true nature of China's threat in space is extremely telling, because as a U.S. senator, he spent decades promoting joint space missions with China's space agency," Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, tells me.
It took Americans a little time, but now they can see China's goals in space. Beijing is working hard to claim the moon as sovereign Chinese territory, among other heavenly bodies.
Naturally, China denies this. "Some U.S. officials have spoken irresponsibly to misrepresent the normal and legitimate space endeavors of China," said Liu Pengyu, a Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington, in response to Nelson's comments. "China firmly rejects such remarks."
"The exploration and peaceful uses of outer space is humanity's common endeavor and should benefit all," Liu went on. "China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space, opposes the weaponization of and arms race in outer space, and works actively toward building a community with a shared future for mankind in the space domain."
Chinese officials, however, say something different when they think no one is listening. "The universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island," said Ye Peijian, the head of China's lunar program, in 2017, referring to features in the East China and South China Seas to which Beijing claims sovereignty. "If we don't go there now even though we're capable of doing so, then we will be blamed by our descendants. If others go there, then they will take over, and you won't be able to go even if you want to."
Ye's choice of examples is ominous, especially his comparison of the moon to the Diaoyu Islands. He compared the moon to the Diaoyu Islands. The Diaoyus, in the East China Sea, have been claimed and are in fact administered by Japan, but China also claims the outcroppings. Periodically, Chinese vessels intrude into the territorial waters around the Senkakus, Tokyo's name for the small islands, as a means of pressuring the Japanese to surrender them.
In short, Ye Peijian was blaming others for what Beijing itself intends to do. The bottom line: China will exclude others from the moon if it is in a position to do so.
What will the Chinese do on the moon? "The world's first trillionaire will be the person who mines the moon's minerals," says Weichert, also affiliated with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute. "Beijing's rulers understand this and have been building the infrastructure necessary for dominating this new industry before anyone else can."
If Beijing can mine the moon's minerals, it will have a head start in two critical economic projects, according to Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center. First, it will grab an advantage in building space craft on the moon, something China has announced it intends to do. "If China can achieve a more rapid exploitation of moon resources, it will have a lead on building on the moon the infrastructure for going to Mars," Fisher tells me.
Second, Fisher notes, China will be able to use its moon resources to "more rapidly build massive space solar power stations to beam solar energy to Earth."
Moreover, Chinese control of the moon confers control of Cis-Lunar space, space between the Earth and the moon. Control of Cis-Lunar space gives a country the ability to shoot down or otherwise disable deep-space satellites, which are essential for early warning of ballistic missile attacks. "From the moon, China can better surveil Cis-Lunar space and also station laser or missile systems to attack critical American satellites in deep space," Fisher explains. Meanwhile, Terry Virts, a former commander of the International Space Station, told Politico that if the Chinese build infrastructure on the moon, they could disrupt communications.
Some experts tell us not to worry about China's moon plans. Svetla Ben-Itzhak and R. Lincoln Hines, two assistant professors at Air University, write in The Conversation that China cannot "take over" the moon because Article II of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits "national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
"China would risk further tarnishing its international image by breaking international law, and it may invite retaliation," write Ben-Itzhak and Hines.
China's Communist Party, despite what some may think, is not particularly concerned about commitments it has made. "China is the world's No. 1 treaty violator," Weichert says. "It thinks nothing of ignoring, violating, or junking its international obligations, on the moon, in deep space and lower-earth orbit, or anywhere else for that matter."
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
