NASA recently sounded the alarm on one of the more insidious plots hatched by Beijing: a potential takeover of the moon, including all its valuable resources.
Bill Nelson, who serves as a NASA administrator, remarked to newspaper Bild that China’s National Space Administration may be mulling an effective “takeover” of the moon.
This takeover would fall under the domain of the Asian giant’s military space program, and it would ostensibly feature close collaboration with Russia.
“There is a new race to space,” Nelson warned, in reference to the space race with Russia commonly known to have occurred during the Cold War.
Noting that the current space race is taking place with China, Nelson warned that “Beijing’s plans go further,” as China intends to set up its own “moon base” alongside Russia.
Nelson also warned that China was actively stealing highly sensitive technology and trade secrets from other nations, including how to capture or otherwise destroy different nations’ satellites.
China predictably responded with fury to Nelson’s remarks, using chief propagandist Zhao Lijian as its mouthpiece.
“This is not the first time for the chief of NASA to lie through his teeth and smear China,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman raged, per a report from Bloomberg News.
“In recent years the United States openly defined space as a war-fighting domain,” Lijian added in a hostile tone, adding that the American side has routinely “constructed a smear campaign against China’s normal and reasonable outer space endeavors.”
“China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks,” Lijian raged.
Over the past several years, China has significantly amplified its space program, succeeding in reaching the dark side of the moon in 2019.
The communist nation is also rapidly advancing a program that will create rockets powerful enough to send astronauts to the moon by 2030, if not sooner.
