When they said they would put a man on the moon, I believed they would do everything they could to make that happen. A friend of mine disagreed saying it was "too expensive", except expense doesn't really work at the nation state level except in terms of understanding allocation of GDP. So what percentage of GDP is being allocated to space ? Hard to say, there is that whole transparency issue.
Sounding like a broken record here, the folks who put on-orbit refueling stations up are going to rule space for a while. That is because the use of space today is constrained by pre-planning a mission and pre-loading all your fuel on the ground. Can't change plans, can't change the mission. If you can refuel while in orbit then a single ship can do multiple missions, with only orbital fuel costs, and that would be exceptionally more efficient. Basically anyone who can do that can out build, maneuver, and occupy orbit and the Moon, any other competitor. People who can't get gas on site are forced to bring it up from the ground with them. Sending up fuel tankers for on-orbit refueling stations can have only a 90% success rate and still be very effective. Bottom line, the owner of the gas station will be king.
Now once that happens. And it will. The music stops on other folks getting into space. It will just be so cheap for the gas station owner to put things up and move them around that no one will be able to economically compete. So the country that does that is the next super power in the third age.
Given the stakes, China has to try to be 'that country'.