I thought the whole idea of "moon bases" were put to rest a long time ago? Not any categories I'm aware of where they are the best option, from mining, forward base to Mars, habitability, etc
A Chinese / European moon base would probably breed a whole new generation of space nerds.
We could always go straight to Mars and do the research there, but that is the riskier strategy. We'd definitely learn what we need to, but it opens up more failure modes for any colonization mission, and managing the risk on Mars would be expensive. Mars colonization would already be straining our ability to engineer and fund, let alone doing it semi-blind.