It's important to remember that USA cannot fly men to the Moon. USA had that ability some 50 years ago. Since then companies changed, technologies were replace

It's important to remember that USA cannot fly men to the Moon. USA had that ability some 50 years ago. Since then companies changed, technologies were replaced, knowledge transformed and people got interested with other things, not to mention that risk threshold grew a lot. As a result, right now USA can't fly men to the Moon. US government, however, doesn't want to give China the ability to say "yes, we're on the Moon - and we're the only nation which can do it today". And because of that, we have a rather similar conditions today as we had some 60 years ago - US government can't really allow China to fly men to the Moon without showing that Americans are also doing that, at the very same time. Taxpayers, of course, are and were different - somebody doesn't care, somebody else cares a lot. I doubt US government want to assume those who care aren't that important.