China Moon Mission: Aiming for 2030 lunar landing
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They'll keep going, and they have the economic base to expand their program.
I think we're seeing the beginning of a new kind of space race. It's likely to be much longer term and grander in scale over time, as we compete for the best spots on the Moon and the first human landing on Mars in the decades to come.
So if US ends up beating China on this, it will all depend if there's something feasible to do next. I'm under impression that everything done in this new space age so far is just a re-do with the cheaper and better technology. SpaceX reaping that but I am not sure if there's any drastically better capabilities. Can't wait for humans on Mars however I don't expect this to be anything more than vanity project.
Xi literally just purged “the country’s top military leader, Gen. Zhang Youxia, and an associate, Gen. Liu Zhenli” [1].
This is the mark of a dictator. Not the Soviet Union at its finest.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/china-xi-mili...
China makes about a third of the world’s stuff [1]. Soviet Union probably peaked around a fifth, though it might have been as high as a fourth.
China is undoubtedly stronger today, absolutely and relative to the U.S., than the Soviets ever were. But history is littered with self-obsessed autocrats ruining a good thing.
Part of what makes the world today frustrating is both America and China are squandering their advantages in remarkably-similar ways, with each regime’s defenders speaking almost identically.
[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/china-worlds-sole-manufacturi...
i actually dont believe that china is heading towards autocratic rule. At least, the trajectory isn't indicative of such tbh. It's dictatorial - ala, the party's needs supersedes the needs of the population, but it doesn't make it autocratic imho.
On the other hand, the behaviour of trump and his goons, have shown more signs of autocratic behaviour than any in recent history in american gov't.
Personalist rule be personalist. Also glad to see you also appear to recognize our "Wolf Warrior" moment.
Why do I see this being quote all the time on HN? China made one third of the value, mostly concentrating in commodity sector. In product / unit volume they are far greater. As in the 80% the OP mentioned.
That isn't what the commenter asked. What percentage of stuff in your house is made in China? I would be extremely surprised if it's not more than 33%.
> history is littered with self-obsessed autocrats ruining a good thing.
referring to China or the US?
both sides of the aisle, the old school Wellesley college democrats were just the same. they didn't even think China would be able to make washing machines! you must remember that in the early 1980s the majority of whitegoods (washing machine, toaster, fridge, etc) were made in the USA and the idea of moving it to China was about as crazy as space data centres or self driving cars
I think he would have. I think he hated American labor more than he hated foreign communists. If his head were still around in a Futurama Jar to comment on the matter, I think he would be blaming American workers for the consequences of his own policies.
At the time, everyone was still optimistic that China would eventually become more open and even democratic, that Russia would not regress, etc.
It was still common for electronics and microprocessors to be made in USA well into the 90s. Reagan had nothing to do with the expansion of WTO and trade deficits with China that ballooned under HW, Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama.
these people were really good at fundraising and getting elected, nobody after kissinger was competent in these ideas (kissingers morality is debatable, but he was very competent)
although, the more damaging strategic trade decisions did come from clinton later i suppose.
I guess the cowboy hats are working.
mainland chinese manufacturing and trade in the 70s and 80s was still mostly garments, appliance assembly and so on. the kind of thing you see in bangladesh today - even vietnam has mostly developed past garment manufacturing.
the world leading electronics manufacturing and precision components only began in china after bill clinton invited china into the wto in 99/2000 and the heavy capital started to flow. even by then, I don't think the USG expected shenzhen to exist
china didn't really move from bicycles to private car ownership until the 00s.
I mean its easy to forget; if you said in 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, maybe even 2005 that china would be the worlds largest producer of cars, electronic cars, smart phones, drones, etc, on track to develop its own EUV lithography, and that many chinese cities would have the highest living standards in the world, you would have sounded ludicrous. intel was king and nokia/blackberry/motorola were the giants in cellular
Ironic, considering his own history as a union leader.
They have their own Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, consumer electronics, car companies, aircraft carriers, chip companies, manufacturing, etc.
I don’t either. But the Soviet Union’s space programme lost its steam in the 1970s. (Venus was its last ambitious achievement.)
If China gets bogged down in Taiwan because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him, that’s going to cost them the space race. (Same as if America decides to replicate the Sino-Soviet split with Europe over Greenland. We can’t afford a competitive space programme at that point.)
The odds of them losing militarily are virtually nil. They could face an insurgency, but there isn't a whole lot of rural Taiwan for insurgents to vanish into and occupying cities is a lot easier absent language and cultural barriers. The could be isolated politically and economically, but realistically China's territorial claim on Taiwan is on far firmer legal and historical ground than many other territorial disputes (eg their control over Tibet).
I don't see the US involving itself directly. What are they going to do, counter-blockade? Start a naval shooting war with a full-on nuclear power on the other side of the world? I don't see Japan backing that either, despite their natural anxiety over the vulnerability of the Ryukyu islands. Support for US bases in Okinawa is ambivalent at best, and while Japan is surely not thrilled about Chinese regional hegemony it's also a reality they've dealt with for thousands of years.
The odds of them winding up in a Russia-Ukraine are not nil. (Combined-arms war is hard even without ideological purges.)
America isn’t only outside power investing not only in helping Taiwan fight, but also making any victory pyrrhic. And following that, we’ll see Indian and Japanese containment go into overdrive. (To say nothing of the Philippines or Vietnam.)
I think Xi probably takes Taiwan. But that trades off China’s century of prosperity on economic and diplomatic fronts. That’s the trap the West has been laying, and Xi’s ego and internal constraints almost force him into it.
(Again, if China had showed its pre-Xi patience in the 2010s, we might have seen Taiwan voting to unify right now. Instead he rushed things for personal glory and enrichment.)
I agree with you about Xi's impatience but I think you're overestimating the political and economic fallout in the same way that people overestimated the ramifications of China retaking and consolidating its control of Hong Kong. The latter is definitely not politically free in the way it used to be but nor has it fallen into decline or dystopia.
Exactly. Everyone keeps acting like it's 50 years ago. China has the world's largest navy and the largest navy almost always wins. They also have a home court advantage. Anyone trying to militarily protect Taiwan would either get the pants beat off of them or suffer starting a world war.
Look at the geography. Taiwan is a long, narrow island. All the important parts are in a narrow plain on the west side, facing China. There's only about 20km of depth from the sea.
The war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time. Taiwan is not like that.
Don’t underestimate the stopping power of water. Taiwan will be China’s first combined-arms assault with a critical amphibious component.
> war in Ukraine is like fighting over Iowa, one farm at a time. Taiwan is not like that
Wide-open plains are traditionally easier for large armies to conquer than mountains.
Their resources and capabilities are obviously substantial and sustained (not going anywhere). The USSR had only a few patches of sustained serious economic output, the rest of the time was rolling from one disaster to another, one deprivation after another.
It seems entirely plausible that China getting bogged down in Taiwan wouldn't be enough to deprive them of a run to the Moon. The US was able to sustain NASA during Iraq-Afghanistan, and go to the Moon during the Vietnam War (plus cultural chaos).
That said, China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining. China will ultimately regret not moving on the island sooner when they see how easy it's going to be to take it and how weak the US response will be (the US can't sustain a stand-off with China in that region for more than a few weeks before folding, unless it's willing to go to full war mode economically (which it's not)).
We probably lost basing on the Moon because Bush went into Iraq.
China getting bogged down in Taiwan means more political repression, more restiveness in Xinjiang and—if New Delhi isn’t totally stupid—needing to prop up Pakistan and its strategic fronts in the Himalayas. It also almost certainly means demand destruction in Europe, the EU and ASEAN.
> China isn't going to get bogged down in Taiwan. It's going to unfortunately be easier than most are imagining
The same people saying this today had hot takes on Kyiv falling in ‘21.
China invading Taiwan demilitarized Japan and India. It fundamentally changes its doorstep in ways that incur costs. To the Soviets, Afghanistan. To America, Iraq and possibly Greenland. To China, Taiwan.
(And let’s be clear: this is a vanity project for Xi. Taiwan would have voted, eventually, to peacefully join China if pre-Xi trends continued. But he needed it on his watch. Hence the stupidity.)
From what I've been hearing from my buddies still in the NatSec space what matters at this point is the 2028 Taiwanese Election and maybe the 2028 Philippines Election. If neither see a definitive victory for either side in 2028, it gives a face saving off-ramp for the Xi admin to argue they brought the "Taiwan Problem" back on track to the pre-2014 status quo. Of course they could be closeted KMT/TPP supporters but most delivery roadmap's I've been hearing align with a 2028 date.
Please note that Kiev not falling after a week in '22 (assuming you misspelled) was pure luck. Russians had extreme advantage in man and firepower. They made a big mistake by using their army against their doctrine - not bombing/shelling targets before attacking (what Russian army was designed for).
But them losing the war (at least the first week) is due to a few lucky dice rolls for us. Us both Europe, but also for me as a Polish expat, knowing my brothers and friends are not dying right now fighting Russian army with all the Ukrainians conscripted into it.
These lucky dice rolls that I can come up from memory: 1. Shooting down one of two military passenger planes with russian Seals that were to take Kiev's Hostomel airport and open an air bridge. The group from the plane that survived did take the airfields, but they couldn't decide on their own to move and take the airports buildings - no distributed command in Russia at that point. Thanks to that, local territorial defence managed to easily kill these elite forces. 2. Fast and generous support from England in form of Javelins that limited Russian heavy equipment advantage. Sorry if I don't credit the countries involved correctly. 3. Fast and generous aid with post soviet equipment from old Warsaw pact countries. These tanks could be used right away as they required no re-training. 4. General incompetence and duty negligence that was systemic in Soviets and is still systemic in Russia. To that we owe cars running out of fuel, or having their tires pop, because, against orders to regularly move them, they all sat with sun damaging one side of the tire so many years, while the responsible for maintenance were drinking vodka and eating pierogi with kielbasa.
this is actually skill, bravery, and fortitude
I see a lot of posturing and sabre rattling, but I don't think Xi would make this mistake - there is too much interest from the West in an independent Taiwan and, as it is now, it's not really an urgent matter to settle it.
China always plays the long game. They are not in this for any quick wins, because there is no political benefit from it - their political system ensures popular and populist measures never prevail over long-term strategy.
That's quite an advantage over most Western democracies, where politicians always prioritise what will give them more votes in the next election over anything that will benefit the country a couple terms down the road.
Mir yes. Buran was an ambitious project but not achievement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)#Orbital_fli...
Are they being fired for disagreeing with him, or for misconduct.
I mean its hard to tell the difference from a western country, but "Zhang was put under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, promoting Li Shangfu as defense minister in exchange for large bribes, and leaking core technical data on China's nuclear weapons to the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Youxia
Seems fairly reasonable. Like the US Military would act in the exact same way, if those circumstances are correct.
Yes and no. Military readiness and potency doesn’t require liberal democracy. It does require skill and command, and sacking military leaders for political reasons is how powers from Athens to the Soviets screwed themselves.
So if the argument is that sacking a top general implies that China is too unstable to prevail in a future space race I don’t buy it.
China isn't in wartime, it is in a build up phase and there's perfectly good reasons to dismiss underperforming generals.
Which isn't to say that's what happened here, but China sacking a general as a data point doesn't mean anything without appropriate context.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/latest-purge-hegseth-remove...
More vulnerable. More brittle. Not stable.
Good luck. We can't do much from here.
Missing from both is that Zhang Youxia was the last senior PLA leader to have seen frontline action in the Sino-Vietnamese war.
Im sure China has plenty of observers/volunteers embedded at the Russian side in the SMO making plenty of notes, reports, and get modern warfare experience..
But how is this less stable than even the United States now? Trump has literally purged nearly every single person leading federal agencies and institutions, including law enforcement. He also effectively stacked the Supreme Court with the help of Mitch McConnell, cheating the system to do his bidding.
the reason why I left China after living there for years was for sure not politics or who is top military leader
Would you mind detailing how it works a little bit more? This "onboarding path" seems to be part of the "secret sauce" that keeps the policies consistent over time.
Usually the mark of a dictator is being the top millitary leader and taking over a country yourself.
Trump has purged dozens of Generals, the head Admiral of the Navy and Coast Guard, head of NSA and Cyber Command and many other top-level officials in the military
and there are only 1,000 women in various special forces (had to pass same physical tests as men) but he is trying to get rid of them all too
Now that is the mark of dictator, agreed
Xi was never elected to his position by the people of China.
Being a bad president isn't the same thing as being a dictator.
Trump is not a dictator, but not because he was elected, but because of our courts and federal system (and theoretically Congress).
it is easy to continue on momentum alone.
Multiply that by the number of companies who spend heavily in China for manufacturing, indirectly causing their advanced manufacturing industry to grow beyond anyone else's and it seems inevitable.
Nope. It isn’t. Xi has ruled China like a dictator that breaks the tradition of intraparty competition the CCP has had since Mao.
When Xi ended his Wolf Warrior nonsense it seemed to signal a reset. Now we have this nonsense.
> Look at where China is today
Look at where America is today. Both are richer than they’ve ever been. More militarily potent than ever. Both are growing their economies, militaries and territorial ambitions. Both have serious issues, including the gerontocratic oligarchic consolidation of power at the expense of national interests.
just don't look at the first derivative vs china
My metric would be what the country’s population today and weighted populations of the future, if they could weigh in, would choose.
It’s possible to frame ex post facto and impossible to pin down in the present. And it’s inherently subjective and culturally relative. But it’s useful to reason with, including for finding patterns in history.
One pattern is the cost of corruption. If a leader is making billions off their power, they’re putting person about polity. That’s currently true in America [1] and China [2][3]. The difference is America has a chance to fix that in ‘28. China used to rotate leaders. But Xi fucked that up. (Note the language similarity between the above comment and how MAGA defends itself. “Trite bullshit.” Beijing has a hidden MACA problem, it’s just had a tougher time dealing with it because Xi reveres Mao.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/spy-sheikh-secret-stake-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/chinas-preside...
[3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/20/us-intel-sa...
Also is MACA actually MCGA? Or something else? Aren’t there similar trends also in Europe and India?
Or without Mao being a trash fire of a leader. (Flip side: where would they be without Deng or Zemin, or others in the CCP who put nation above personal interest? The folks Xi is killing because they threaten his personal interests.)
I'd say for the good of the majority of the people.
In other systems only those on top profit (maybe 10-20% max) even if they claim otherwise.
Thus democracy, through competition, aligns the leader's incentive with their people best.
Are you saying the US isn't doing that presently?
If power differences can be explained by better access to resource and it’s only about head starts, China should have stayed the leading power.
Once again a Nazi is in charge of the western world's most advanced rocket program.
And this is just the latest news coming from over there. I won't mention the fact that there are people alive today who couldn't drink from the same fountain as other people because their skin is dark. It was never fucking great.
So if you are American and still talk all this shit about China being a dictatorship and authoritarian this and “purge” that, I wish you would honestly shut the fuck up. Really. You are in no position to have an informed opinion on this because all of your information is force fed down your throat by half a dozen mega companies that are in bed with your regime.
So yeah, I'm sure China has a lot of issues, but if you didn't live there for some time or even speak the language for that matter, just shut the fuck the up.
Jiang Zemin in office in office 1993-2003 - 67-77yo
Hu Jintao 2003-2013 - 61-71yo
Xi Jinping 2013-2026 - 60-72yo
about time to replace XJP
US really went downhill into gerontocracy after Obama
if it would be up to me I'd set limits to terms of candidacy to somewhere between 35-65 at the day of elections
Bit defensive there, eh?
China is an autocracy and Xi is acting in the predictably self-destructive ways a dictator does. The U.S. is heading down that same path, with Trump practically mimicking Xi. N = 2 doesn’t weaken an argument. And folks who lived through the Nazis saying they see similar veins today doesn’t undermine their credibility.
(The hilarity of it is if you take your comment and replace China and America with partisan or pro-American coding, you could pop it out of Hegseth’s office and it would be right at home. Your comment almost seals the point that Xi is all the problems of MAGA, except polling China instead.)
Ok, China is an autocracy, right? Could you explain to me how China conduct elections? Can you explain to me how they approve laws? Do they have a constitution? A justice system? Try answering these questions without much looking up and even if you do, please note the sources. No need to answer me really. Just ask yourself whether you know this or not and how qualified are you to actually label a HUGE state like China with one single heavily charged word.
However they have their own timetable and milestones , hence going to the moon has already been earmarked with followup misson for a lunar base and further missions already penned in. So less of a race if one party is just doing their own thing.
We see the same dynamic viz Taiwan , western commentariat seeks to impose deadlines and spin rationales when they never materialise. Or the AI race where China keeps churning out OSS models while American labs are in a sel declared 'race' for supremacy.
> If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth.
This is kind of underselling the situation. China is more stable than the U.S. China is also beating the pants off the U.S. in several sectors and in the ones they're not, they're rapidly catching up.
When China beats the U.S. to the Moon, they will also have surpassed the U.S. in several other sectors as well at the same time, all while having a more stable government and continuing to increase the size of their middle class.
And another big difference is that during the US/Russia space race, the US had a GDP three times the size the GDP of Russia.
Now the US's GDP is only 50% bigger than China's GDP. So nearly 200% bigger vs Russia back then and only 50% bigger vs China now: it's not the same game anymore.
First semipermanent settlement. First industrial capacity. First lunar launch facility.
(Why do I use the word ass so often?)
> compete for the best spots
Nothing in outer space treaty that enables first come / first serve squatting. Second mover can always park next door. If anything OST allows joint scientific observation, which allows actors to build right next to each other.
The entire best spot narrative is US trying to bake in landgrab provisions via Artemis Accords (not international/customary law) for safety zones, i.e. landgrab by exclusion - if US build first, someone else can't because it might effect US safety. But reality is non signatories not obliged to honour Artemis. PRC's Artemis, i.e. International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) doesn't have safety zones baked into language yet, but they're going to want to push for some sort of deconfliction as matter of lawfare eventually.
But shit hits fan, and country absolutely need that moon base, everyone who can will be shanty-towning it up in Shackleton, where prime real estate (80-90% illumination windows) are like a few 300m strips. No one is going to settle for shit sloppy seconds because Artemis dictates 2km safety buffer. Exhaust plume from competitor landing next door damage your base? Your fault for not hardening it in first place, building paper mache bases and trying to exclude others under guise of safety is just not going to fly. With all the terrestrial geopolitical implications that entails.
Antarctica then. (That's fine.)
What a horrible attitude.
The Soviet Union won the "space race" of course (or perhaps Germany did if you define it as suborbital space flight), it just lost the "man on the moon race". In any case, after losing the man on the moon race, the Soviet Union did not just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They continued to invest a great deal in their civil, scientific, and military space capabilities after 1969.
Will the Chinese Communist Party similarly collapse in the 2050s? Perhaps not, but they will be going through significant demographic decline from the 2030s; they are increasingly in conflict with the west and with their territorial neighbors; they may become involved in significant military conflicts (e.g., over Taiwan); their current leader has consolidated power and succession could be spicy. So who knows? It's not inconceivable. China would surely continue and continue a space program as Russia has.
Lanyue, which masses 26 metric tons, can land two (maybe four?) astronauts on the moon plus a 200 kg rover. Space X's Starship is designed to land 100 tons on the moon--that's 100 tons of payload.
Let's say you want to build a small moon base, one that's maybe 100 tons (ISS is 400 tons). How many Lanyue launches would be necessary? Maybe 10? Now remember that each launch is expendable. It will cost China between $500 and $1 billion per launch. That's $5 to $10 billion for a moon base, not counting the cost of the base itself!
Starship is designed to be fully re-usable. Their goal is to get each launch to cost $10 to $20 million total. To land 100 tons on the moon, they will have to refuel in orbit by launching between 10 and 20 tanker flights. That means one trip to the moon costs $200 to $400 million maximum. Even assuming that Starship underperforms and can only land 50 tons on the moon, we still only need two launches for a total cost of $800 million maximum.
That is literally 10 times cheaper than Chinese capabilities; alternatively, it is 10x the payload at the same cost.
Of course, there are two major developments that Space X still needs to demonstrate: rapid re-use (to bring the cost down) and in-space refueling. And that's why it's taken so long.
But if/when they pull it off, it won't really matter if China lands first. The American program is much more ambitious.
Are we in another Cold War Space Race? What matters here? Being better at science? Engineering? Space tourism?
For the Chinese however this is their first rodeo.
(Apparently Artemis II is now pushed off the March [1]. Alongside Starship’s next scheduled launch [2].)
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/03/nasa-conducts...
I long suspect Blue Origin will be the first US based to touch down as Starship is just too complicated to get it done in the next 2-3 years, but that doesnt mean even the 2028 landing is assured.
Space exploration had been fairly low key for decades but the last decade has been something to see.
Oddly enough, the same country also accomplished the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth landing on the moon by humans. So if all goes well, China can be extremely triumphant with their highly anticipated seventh place trophy.
The current question isn't "is it possible?", it is "who can pull it off today?"
They stopped doing more moon missions in the 70s because people lost interest very quickly and nobody cared anymore.
It was perfectly clear in context that the OP was talking about the new space race where the question is which modern superpower will get there first. It's just hilarious that so many Americans immediately begin talking about how really they got their truly first, in an effort to pretend they couldn't understand and change the question to one which doesn't hurt their ego.
The America which landed on the moon in the 1960s is dead and buried. And the America which said it's going to land on the moon again hasn't done it yet and it's not clear that it can.
This is an America-centric geopolitical model with zero predictive power.
China annexed Tibet in 1951 [1]. Xinjiang has been fighting colonization from the Qings, Soviets, Nationalists and PRC for over a century.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_China
It offers no predictions, policy prescriptions beyond railing and an infinity of excuses for justifying pretty much anything for the latter and against the former, down to subgroups within each nation.
The coloniser-colonised model works in the New World. It’s silly outside it as a general model. (And it misfires completely when comparing America and China. Both were colonies. Both have colonized and hegemonised.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_expedition_to_Tibet_(1...
But regardless, I will congratulate China wholeheartedly on its 7th place, if and when that happens.
A few years later, a few people from our Taipei office, whom I did not meet during my trip, transferred to our US office. So I asked them what they thought of the moon landings. They also said the landings were a hoax.
Not a perfect sampling, but still interesting.
I wonder what the average person in China thinks of the Apollo moon landings. Or maybe it's just that many non-Americans in general think that the moon landings are a hoax.
so I'm looking forward to China putting man on the Moon finally, bonus points if it will be first woman ever, since as we discussed yesterday with my daughter I had to tell her woman was not yet on the Moon because fighter jet pilots were only men those 50 years ago when they were supposed to land on the Moon
The younger generations think it’s a hoax but are more uncertain because they know that any information about the event is likely to be propaganda
People from small countries usually have only a single viewpoint and are deeply influenced by propaganda. They have almost no independent thought.
> I wonder what the average person in China thinks of the Apollo moon landings
we believe in science. most people believe it's true. it's just a shame how USA become today. we saw both ourselves and America some Rome kind of Empire. we like it before, we just feel sorry it will collapse and cannot even do something it did beofre.
also something related to USSR: We also believe that the Soviet Union achieved accomplishments in space exploration no less significant than those of the United States; it is just that Western propaganda has deliberately downplayed them.
Yikes.
As a result, I don't have a lot of optimism about a US landing on the Moon. On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope did succeed even though the launch date slipped from 2007 to 2021. So I've learned not to be completely pessimistic.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/12/us/bush-sets-target-for-m... https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/us/bush-backs-goal-of-fli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program
Between those two the economic effects of invading Iraq came home to roost. We “won” the invasion. But lost the board.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2014:_JWST_Delays
The US has been talking about a return to the Moon for 50 years. George W Bush talked about it in 2004. It still hasn't happened. Artemis is limping along but it's entirely pork barrelling for the overly expensive SLS program that really no future.
Some might say SpaceX will come to the rescue. That's... doubtful. Notably, Elon calls the Moon "a distraction" [1]. Why would he do this? It's free money from the government.
The answer is actually pretty simple: Tsarship simply isn't designed for this mission type. Landing a Starship on the MOon is much more complex than, say, the LEM for the Apollo missions or the proposed Chinese lunar lander. If you could, your astronats would be 40 meters off the ground. The big advantage of a "traditional" lunar lander is it can't really topple over. Plus the Apollo LEM also had a very simple engine that could only ever be used once but the big advantage was that it was extremely difficult to fail.
If you exclude all that, Starship is behind schedule and still requires developing technology that they haven't even begun to test, most notably in-orbit refueling.
So why is China doing all this? I suspect it's mainly to develop their own reusable rocket program with a side of national pride. China is very concerned with their national security interests. Being able to launch things cheaply is a critical national security interest.
Still, the mission architecture of China's mission (from what I've read) is still fairly complex, requiring two vehicles to rendezvous in lunar orbit. That's also why I think the primary goal is orbital launch capacity.
Bonus points if it's gonna be woman finally, good role model for girls.
We already know how to do this, right? Right!?
I am genuinely curious.