Recently, NASA administrator Bill Nelson offered a warning about Chinese designs on the moon.
“I don’t want China to get to the South Pole first with humans and then say: This is ours, stay out,” he said. “If indeed we find water in abundance there that could be utilized for future crews and spacecraft, we want to make sure that’s available to all, not just the one that’s claiming it.”
Nelson has previously warned about the possibility of China’s extending its hegemony to the heavens. He has even suggested that the United States is in a space race with China. But unlike NASA versus the Soviet Union, the prize is not who gets back to the moon first but who controls the moon and its abundant resources.
The idea of a big power competition between the United States and its allies and China, along with perhaps a handful of nations such as Russia, would seem to run contrary to NASA’s push to make the Artemis return to the moon program truly international.
The Artemis Accords, an agreement among 28 countries and counting, establishes the “rules of the road” for nations and private companies operating on the moon and other celestial bodies. The European Space Agency has built the Orion service module. A Canadian astronaut, Jeremy Hanson, will fly around the moon with the crew of Artemis II. Doubtless, other international astronauts will fly on subsequent Artemis missions. Why not include China so that the entire world can be seen to be returning to the moon together?
The problem is that China has been dismissive of the Artemis program in its state-run media, comparing it unfavorably to its own return to the moon effort. Beijing has claimed that its lunar program is “normal and reasonable” while Artemis is designed to buttress America’s “global leadership” in lunar exploration. The Chinese government is not disposed to sign the Artemis Accords any time soon.
China’s behavior on Earth certainly suggests that it would not play well with others in space. Beijing’s persecution of the Uyghurs, threats against Taiwan and cyber espionage operations are actions of a totalitarian government with imperial ambitions. No evidence exists suggesting those ambitions won’t extend to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Indeed, the Lowy Institute, a think tank based in Australia, compares the rivalry between NASA and the Artemis Alliance with China not so much to the space race of the 1960s as to the “great game” played between the British Empire and Czarist Russia over Central Asia in the 19th century. A growing recognition that the game exists and the prize is the riches on the moon and Earth-approaching asteroids have focused international policymakers’ attention.
How will the lunar great game play out? The last thing anyone should want would be for fighting to break out on the lunar surface between the United States and its allies against China. For one thing, war consumes resources that could otherwise be invested in economic development. For another thing, a conflict on the moon could spread to Earth. A war between two nuclear powers is undesirable.
Could the end game of the lunar great game be less lethal than the outbreak of hostilities? Media reports suggest one possibility: China’s economy may be on the brink of imploding,
The immediate cause of China’s economic woes is a real estate market bubble. Also, China’s formerly lucrative export industries have cooled as customers, frightened by Beijing’s bellicose policies, flee to other countries for import goods and investment opportunities. The long-term consequences of China’s one-child policy, which has caused a demographic train wreck, have not helped. Neither has China’s draconian zero COVID lockdown policy.
Forcing China to spend resources it doesn’t have on the lunar great game could help tip that country over the edge. Just as President Reagan’s economic and military strategy, which included the Strategic Defense Initiative, is partially credited for destroying the Soviet Union, Artemis could be part of a plan to bring down the Chinese Communist Party.
Afterward, Artemis could also be the means of extending a helping hand to whatever government follows. If the post-Xi Jinping regime is disposed to be a good world citizen, China can, at last, become a partner rather than an enemy in the expansion of human civilization to the moon and beyond.
Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is it So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and, most recently, “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.