Xi literally just purged “the country’s top military leader, Gen. Zhang Youxia, and an associate, Gen. Liu Zhenli” [1].
This is the mark of a dictator. Not the Soviet Union at its finest.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/china-xi-mili...
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
Missing from both is that Zhang Youxia was the last senior PLA leader to have seen frontline action in the Sino-Vietnamese war.
(Apparently Artemis II is now pushed off the March [1]. Alongside Starship’s next scheduled launch [2].)
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/03/nasa-conducts...
My metric would be what the country’s population today and weighted populations of the future, if they could weigh in, would choose.
It’s possible to frame ex post facto and impossible to pin down in the present. And it’s inherently subjective and culturally relative. But it’s useful to reason with, including for finding patterns in history.
One pattern is the cost of corruption. If a leader is making billions off their power, they’re putting person about polity. That’s currently true in America [1] and China [2][3]. The difference is America has a chance to fix that in ‘28. China used to rotate leaders. But Xi fucked that up. (Note the language similarity between the above comment and how MAGA defends itself. “Trite bullshit.” Beijing has a hidden MACA problem, it’s just had a tougher time dealing with it because Xi reveres Mao.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/spy-sheikh-secret-stake-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/chinas-preside...
[3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/mar/20/us-intel-sa...
China makes about a third of the world’s stuff [1]. Soviet Union probably peaked around a fifth, though it might have been as high as a fourth.
China is undoubtedly stronger today, absolutely and relative to the U.S., than the Soviets ever were. But history is littered with self-obsessed autocrats ruining a good thing.
Part of what makes the world today frustrating is both America and China are squandering their advantages in remarkably-similar ways, with each regime’s defenders speaking almost identically.
[1] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/china-worlds-sole-manufacturi...
The coloniser-colonised model works in the New World. It’s silly outside it as a general model. (And it misfires completely when comparing America and China. Both were colonies. Both have colonized and hegemonised.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_expedition_to_Tibet_(1...
As a result, I don't have a lot of optimism about a US landing on the Moon. On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope did succeed even though the launch date slipped from 2007 to 2021. So I've learned not to be completely pessimistic.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/12/us/bush-sets-target-for-m... https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/us/bush-backs-goal-of-fli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/latest-purge-hegseth-remove...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)#Orbital_fli...
Are they being fired for disagreeing with him, or for misconduct.
I mean its hard to tell the difference from a western country, but "Zhang was put under investigation for allegedly forming political cliques, promoting Li Shangfu as defense minister in exchange for large bribes, and leaking core technical data on China's nuclear weapons to the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Youxia
Seems fairly reasonable. Like the US Military would act in the exact same way, if those circumstances are correct.
The US has been talking about a return to the Moon for 50 years. George W Bush talked about it in 2004. It still hasn't happened. Artemis is limping along but it's entirely pork barrelling for the overly expensive SLS program that really no future.
Some might say SpaceX will come to the rescue. That's... doubtful. Notably, Elon calls the Moon "a distraction" [1]. Why would he do this? It's free money from the government.
The answer is actually pretty simple: Tsarship simply isn't designed for this mission type. Landing a Starship on the MOon is much more complex than, say, the LEM for the Apollo missions or the proposed Chinese lunar lander. If you could, your astronats would be 40 meters off the ground. The big advantage of a "traditional" lunar lander is it can't really topple over. Plus the Apollo LEM also had a very simple engine that could only ever be used once but the big advantage was that it was extremely difficult to fail.
If you exclude all that, Starship is behind schedule and still requires developing technology that they haven't even begun to test, most notably in-orbit refueling.
So why is China doing all this? I suspect it's mainly to develop their own reusable rocket program with a side of national pride. China is very concerned with their national security interests. Being able to launch things cheaply is a critical national security interest.
Still, the mission architecture of China's mission (from what I've read) is still fairly complex, requiring two vehicles to rendezvous in lunar orbit. That's also why I think the primary goal is orbital launch capacity.