a controversial security law in Hong Kong,

building in the South China Sea,

to China's global infrastructure projects,

there is undeniably a Cold War-like battle

for influence on all fronts.

And that includes space.

We're in a space race today,

just as we were in the 1960s

and the stakes are even higher.

Although China hasn't come close

to achieving what the U.S. has, they're catching up.

Since 2018, China has launched more rockets into orbit

than any other country.

In 2019, they became the first to land a rover

on the far side of the moon.

And in 2020, China released the last satellite

in their global navigation satellite system,

called Beidou, China's answer to the U.S.-made GPS.

Like China's big infrastructure projects here on Earth,

their goals are to get a foothold in space technology

that will drive profit,

make them independent from U.S. technology,

get an upper hand in military operations

and show superiority on the world stage.

With Joe Biden in the White House,

experts think space spending could slow,

although the Democratic Party has stated

that it will continue the goal

of sending Americans back to the moon and beyond to Mars.

We are launching humans to the moon

for the first time since 1972.

And that might not be a bad thing.

While a Cold War scenario

has dangerous political and economic implications,

a race to the cosmos, like any good rivalry,

could be a huge benefit for space and other industries.

If you think that the U.S.-China competition

is going to be not just a clash of strategies,

but a clash of systems,

it's going to be a contest over whether

American-style liberal democracy

or Chinese-style authoritarian capitalism

is best suited to the demands of the 21st century,

then it's entirely possible

that you could see the United States

make investments in infrastructure and education

and technological innovation

and basic research

that it wouldn't otherwise make

as a result of that competition.

In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world

by putting the first ever satellite into space, Sputnik 1.

There is real military significance to these launchings.

The satellite's unanticipated success

brought on the American Sputnik crisis,

a period of public fear and anxiety

in Western nations about the perceived

technological gap between the United States

and Soviet Union.

And so the National Defense Education Act of 1957

is passed in response to Sputnik.

And it includes major investments

in a variety of intellectual pursuits

that were considered critical to staying ahead

in the Cold War.

And so the rise of entire industries like aerospace,

the rise of entire regions like Silicon Valley

or Orange County, semiconductors, the Internet,

a variety of other things that we associate

with the rise of the information age,

were originally conceived

as part of the military industrial complex

in the 1950s and 1960s.

And let me say that our scientists and engineers,

in offering their services to the government in this field,

have been generous, patriotic and prompt.

And nowhere was government spending

more apparent and highly publicized

as the space race of the time.

In the Eisenhower years and then Kennedy years,

the U.S. started pouring money into the space program.

By, I think mid-1960s, the U.S. was spending about

4% of its total budget on space.

It was the largest percentage of the budget

spent on space in American history.

And the intense rivalry allowed

for some of the biggest accomplishments

humanity has ever seen.

Including the first living animal to enter space by Russia.

The first man to enter space by Russia.

And the first probe to land on the moon, also Russia.

And so that led to a huge surge in U.S. spending

on the space program,

which culminated in 1969 with Neil Armstrong

and Buzz Aldrin stepping on the moon.

The moon landing is considered

a conclusion to the space race.

And as U.S.-Soviet relations improved, space spending waned.

I think that one of the reasons that the U.S.

has not been as focused on space

is because the end of the Cold War.

Since the Apollo program,

the NASA budget has hovered around 0.5% to 1%.

But in the last few decades,

the world has seen the rise of a new power, China.

While governed by an authoritarian regime

like the USSR was,

China also has far more economic strength

and greater resources than the Soviet Union ever did.

And that worries the U.S.

The president has already signed into law

the largest NASA budget

since the days of the Apollo program.

There is very much an ideological challenge.

It's sort of a contest over which sort of system,

democracy or authoritarian capitalism,

will win the day in the 21st century.

And I think what American officials

fear is that the Chinese will not be content

to have second-tier status in a world

that is led by the United States and its allies.

But space isn't simply a show

of technological strength like it was during the Cold War.

The space industry is now worth

an estimated $345 billion.

With technology that we use every day

depending on it, like GPS.

China started launching an alternative

to the American system, called Beidou in 2000.

The recently completed version

is 20 centimeters more accurate than GPS

by some estimates.

China's Beidou space program

brings prestige and practical benefits,

the prestige from announcing their arrival

as a power in space similar to the prestige which the US

achieved from its first moon landing.

The practical benefits, both military and commercial.

If you wanna target a missile or a fast-food delivery,

you need a GPS system.

With its Beidou system,

China has its own GPS capability in place.

And so independence from U.S. influence

on that key part of infrastructure

in the information economy.

China even opened up

the private space industry in 2014

in the hope of encouraging competitors

to the U.S. private space industry.

iSpace was the first private company in China

to successfully launch a rocket and satellite

into orbit in 2019.

And a company called Galaxy Space

plans to launch 650 low-Earth orbit satellites

similar to SpaceX's Starlink,

which will give better, faster internet access

to people all over the world.

But it's not all about business.

I think that for President Xi Jinping,

this Chinese space program is hugely important,

not just for all the practical applications

but also just for prestige.

It's important for President Xi to show that

China is a superpower.

Superpowers have space programs.

China will have to prove

that they can perform the kind of missions

NASA has done and possibly go even further.

Like China's recent moon rover, Chang'e-4.

Although it was the third country

to land a rover on the moon,

it was the first to land on the far side of the moon.

And China's recently launched Mars rover isn't the first,

but it's the first orbiter lander rover all in one mission.

China even has a Voyager-like mission

in its initial planning stages

that will do a flyby of Neptune

and then out to explore interstellar space.

But more importantly, China will build

its own space station,

which will serve as an essential tool

for tests and research in space

and offer an alternative to the International Space Station.

When it comes to innovation,

China will have some advantages

when it comes to directing the entire resources

of a state or the entire resources of a society

toward some particular technological challenge,

AI, for instance.

But the cost of that is there is less of an open

economic and intellectual ecosystem in China

than there is in the United States.

There's more inherent dynamism in a society

where you have truly open information flows

and where innovation is as much

a bottom-up, as it is a top-down phenomenon.

And so that's not to say that the United States

is destined to win the race for AI or 5G

or any other technology.

I think there's real danger in a lot of these fields.

But if the United States puts forth the energy

and puts forth the investment that's necessary

in these areas, there's no inherent reason

that it can't succeed because it is a democracy.

And there are signs

that China's space program is stumbling.

In 2020, a long march 5B rocket scattered debris

over Cote d'Ivoire, after an uncontrolled

re-entry of the rocket's core stage.

This was the largest botch of its kind in years.

So the worry is that China is just not that transparent

when it comes to this sort of thing.

So, was this just a one-off?

Was this just something went wrong,

or is this just an example

of what might be happening going forward?

The competition may prove to be too much.

China is up against not only a space program

with a long and decorated history.

But one with more ambitious missions than ever before.

The U.S. is now trying to beat China back to the moon

to build a lunar base, harvest resources

and then use it as a stepping stone to get to Mars.

This time when we go to the moon,

we're gonna go to stay with a purpose

of learning how to live and work on another world

so we can take that knowledge and information to Mars.

I think that the sense of urgency

that we're hearing from the Trump administration

about the need to accelerate the Artemis program

to get to the moon by 2024,

I think part of that

is because of the perceived threat from China.

So in that sense, I think that having China as

a more serious player in space

could potentially be good for NASA,

good for the American space program.

Other NASA projects include a Mars mission

equipped with a mini helicopter

to fly on the surface of the red planet,

another mini helicopter mission planned for Titan,

Saturn's largest moon,

and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope,

an upgrade to the Hubble Space Telescope

whose photographs changed our understanding

of the universe as we know it.

The ambitions of China and the U.S.

may depend on how long their rivalry continues.

If history is any lesson, the bigger the rivalry,

the further the two space superpowers

are likely to push themselves.

The overall goal with China's space program,

I think, is to match the United States.

China does not want to be subordinate to the U.S. on Earth

and doesn't want to be subordinate to the U.S. in space.

Right now, the plan is to try to narrow the gap.

And so if you are looking at this