They stopped doing more moon missions in the 70s because people lost interest very quickly and nobody cared anymore.

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

But regardless, I will congratulate China wholeheartedly on its 7th place, if and when that happens.

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.

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.)