FPI / July 11, 2025
By Richard Fisher
China seeks space superiority in all realms, Low Earth Orbit, on the Moon and Mars.
Factored into this strategy is the arena of political warfare in space.
China is well on its way to the Moon by 2030, is a leading satellite power, Low Earth Orbit space combat power and has a successful space station program.
Regarding space politics and political appeal, however, China likely understands that it has problems.
On Earth at least, China is increasingly viewed as a dangerous military aggressor with designs for global hegemony and its main partner on Earth and in space, Russia, since 2022 has pursued a horrific war of empire against Ukraine.
In space, China’s space program is run by its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which has created a dual use program in which space launch vehicles, space stations, and manned spacecraft are designed to perform military missions if required.
The PLA and its master, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), very likely understand that military superiority in space, on the Moon, then Mars and then Deep Space, are all necessary to secure broad hegemony on Earth.
Most space faring nations that can connect the CCP’s actions on Earth and in space can begin to understand the CCP’s threatening objectives, which is why China’s attempts rally nations to its causes in space have fallen flat, most recently led by the China-dominated, Russia-partnered International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
By the mid-2030s China and Russia could be building multiple bases on the Moon, supported by impressive unmanned lunar systems and a constellation of space-control capable lunar satellites, and though China and Russia want 50 members in the ILRS, they only have 12: China, Russia, Venezuela, Belarus, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Egypt, Nicaragua, Thailand, Serbia, and Kazakhstan.
China’s first “guest” astronauts will most likely come from Pakistan, that will be trained in China and sent to China’s space station, completely paid for by China — a deal that is attractive to most other ILRS members already well paid to be part of China’s political-economic coalitions.
The problem for China is that as its space program progresses, it has stood in starker contrast to the space-political coalition gathered by the democracies and nominally led by the United States, a now 55-nation coalition of the signers of the 2020 Artemis Accords.
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