According to Space.Com, a congressional hearing concerning the future course of the Chinese space program illustrates the confusion that many Western analysts have concerning its implications. There are two things one can take away, though.

One is that China, being a dictatorship that regularly violates the human rights of its own people and an aspiring imperial power that seeks to supplant the United States as sole super power, is up to no good. The test of a satellite killer weapon certainly points in that direction. The trajectory of the nominally civilian space effort, involving a number of manned flights and robotic probes to the Moon, has even more ominous strategic implications.
Due to the discovery of water and other resources on the Moon, Earth's nearest neighbor takes on a strategic value not entirely appreciated by most people. The course of the Chinese manned space program, with each flight testing more challenging space operations, points to an eventual lunar effort. The recently announced Chinese space station would test both rendezvous and docking and long duration space flight, both critical for a lunar effort.
The Chang'e series of lunar probes, which will lead to a sample return mission later this decade, constitutes a Chinese examination of the Moon and its resources, as well as unmanned tests for landing operations on the lunar surface.
The second takeaway is that an American/Chinese space race resembles the hare and the tortoise. America tends to move in sprints, as it did with Apollo, and then rest on its laurels for a while, often mired in confusion and chaos, pretty much as it is now. The Chinese move slow and steady, with years transpiring between each space flight, but each building on the last as with expanded capabilities.
Of course, having a race to start with has to involve recognizing that there is a race. Some analysts tend to despise Chinese space capabilities, seeing as they are roughly at about the same level as America's were during the Gemini program. But with the end of the space shuttle program, America's space capabilities will return to the level they were during the years-long period of rebuilding after Challenger and then after Columbia, which is to say nonexistent. That will remain the case until at least 2016. Meanwhile, American policy makers are mired in arguments over goals, i.e. Moon vs. an asteroid, and methods, public vs. commercial. Little progress is happening as whatever space exploration effort there are gets underfunded and has no real clear goals. Meanwhile, slow and steady, the Chinese continue the race.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.
(Source: Contributor Network)