> This fixation on the moon in a country with stark poverty for most of its rural majority is a sign of China's tyrannical government. India's political system

> This fixation on the moon in a country with stark poverty for most of its rural majority is a sign of China's tyrannical government. India's political system is far from that of China's, but they've been in the news lately for the preparation and launching of their Mars probe. That probe has no direct application to improving the lives of the many Indian peasants who live in 'stark poverty' as well, but it sure as hell doesn't signify anything about the Indian government's commitment (or lack of) to basic freedoms. This is a non sequitur. > I wish there were a higher percentage of participants on Hacker News who have both thorough knowledge of the language and culture and regular access to the Chinese press and mass media to comment on stories submitted here about China. I do too. Maybe we'd get a more nuanced view than the caricatures which always show up about modern China (recycled from those about Cold War China) here on a regular basis. > ...thoughts of a British space scientist (not a Sinologist) I'd trust a space scientist more than a Sinologist on this (or just about any other matter). > (the Chinese term is "taikonauts") The Chinese term is not taikonauts. 'Taikonaut' is a made up word used by English media outlets that is meaningless in Chinese (it lops off the latter half of 'tai kong', space, and splices the '-naut' suffix to the end). > The big priority for China in the next decade will be opening up the political system to more dissent and more effective participation by the masses, especially the rural masses who make up the majority of the population, and avoiding the "middle-income trap" of economic growth stagnating while China is still a relatively poor country on a per-capita basis. There is no reason China cannot do that and maintain a robust national science program at the same time. None of China's recent third plenum discussion points had anything to do with their space program; many of them involve economic reforms intended to address the urban-rural divide. To claim that their space program is anything more than an afterthought in terms of national priorities and decision-making is utterly daft.