Cold War Between America and China – The New Space Race.

The war in Ukraine started by Putin also upsets the balance in space.

Chang'e-5 has neither the charisma nor the sense of formula of Neil Armstrong. However, this small robot has entered the history of China as the American astronaut on the other side of the Atlantic: it is this robot who planted the first flag of his country on the Moon, in December 2020.

“Like Apollo 11 once, the Chinese flag inspires humanity today,” commented the Global Times, the official newspaper of the Chinese government, in all modesty. Space is always approached as a project for humanity, but it is never the UN flag that is planted on the Moon for all that ... For Beijing as for Washington, the flag symbolizes the struggle to control the narrative, to win the space conquest.

Sixty years after the Cold War star race between the USSR and America, geopolitics is making a comeback in space. Since the beginning of the 2000s, China has been gaining power, with an extremely ambitious program to compete with the American superpower.

Space is a must for China which wants to become the first world power by 2049

In 2003, Beijing placed its first Taikonaute in orbit, before launching the first version of its space station in 2011, then the second one in 2016. The Chinese will land on the far side of the Moon in 2018 and send their rover to Mars in 2021. For China, space is above all a vector of prestige. It aspires to become the first world power in all fields by 2049, to celebrate the century of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and space is explicitly among the sectors in which it must be ahead of other powers, including the United States.

This space development also guarantees Beijing its economic and technological independence, embodied by the launch of BeiDou, its satellite navigation system, in 2020.

On the other hand, Washington does not intend to be eclipsed so easily. By far the leading space power, the United States continues to invest 50 billion dollars each year in this sector, not counting the development of its private players. In comparison, the annual Chinese space budget, kept secret, is estimated by specialists at between 10 and 15 billion dollars.

If the Americans invest so much money in space, it is to preserve their lead over all the other space powers. The lunar program alone costs them 10 billion dollars per year, which is equivalent to the entire European space budget, including the States and the European Union!

America wants to colonize the Moon now to keep its lead over China

In a strange return to the Cold War, the two current superpowers are fighting over the same objective: colonizing the Moon. Beijing and Washington want to put a man, or a woman, on our satellite before 2030, but also to exploit the resources there and establish a lunar base, a sort of launch pad for the exploration of the Universe. On the Moon, the challenge for the Americans would be to move to a new phase of space activity by developing human, industrial and economic activity directly in space.

American projects on the Moon are very concrete, with mining, 3D printers, or space tugs. For the moment, the Chinese are only looking to do what they have not yet done, i.e. put a foot on the Moon.

In this modern space race, China can rely on a historical player in the sector in full disarray. Russia, which sent the first man into space in 1961, has lacked engineers, new technologies, and above all a space policy since the fall of the Soviet Union. With nuclear power, space remained the last sector in which Moscow could benefit from an international stature.

But the war in Ukraine ended up burying the means that Moscow could devote to this effort. Once again, Putin's expansionist madness is harming Russia and its future!

Unlike China, which has always been excluded from international technological cooperation, Russia has been cooperating with the West since the end of the Soviet Union and is now very dependent on Western products in certain fields, notably electronics. Western sanctions force Moscow to get closer to the Chinese giant to continue to exist in space.

China maintains a partnership with Russia simply for political reasons

Since 2014 and the invasion of Crimea, Russia and China have become space partners, Beijing taking advantage of the long Soviet experience in the field. For example, Chinese Taikonauts' suits and space capsules use Russian technologies. In the spring of 2021, China and Russia announced that they were working together on a lunar science station, either on the surface or in orbit, to compete with the American-led Artemis program.

Russia's aspirations as an autonomous power in space are shrinking. The partnership with China is becoming vital for the Russian space industry, which will soon no longer be able to go into orbit alone. On the other hand, China needs Russia and its experience less and less, if not from a political point of view, since cooperating in space programs, which are at the same time strategic, scientific, and ambitious, sends a very strong message to the Western world.

As on Earth, the cold war is making its return to space.