X-Message-Number: 19159
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 02:01:15 +0800 (CST)
From: =?big5?q?kurt2100kimo?= <>
Subject: Moonbase ChungKuo by 2010

Yes, the Chiness have, in deed, announced thier
intentions of establishing a permanent base on the
Moon by 2010 as well as manned missions to Mars
shortly thereafter. However, one must realize other
issues occuring in China to realize that this probably
will not happen.

Much has been said about Japan's banking problems.
What is not covered by the financial press is that
China has a banking problem which is much worst than
that of Japan's. The large Chinese banks are dominated
by the government, trying to keep the giant state
corporations alive, in order to prevent an
unemployment rate of 100 million people. These
enterprises are bankrupt by Western accounting
standards, and the money being lent to them will never
be paid back. At the same time, the government is
trying to promote the private sector in order to get
it to creat as many jobs as possible. However, 70% of
Chinese workers still work for the state enterprises,
the private sector can't absorb them all right now.
Hence, the lending of money to the state enterprises
to keep them afloat, at least for the short term.

Analysts think that all of this will come to a head
sometime between 2005-2010, and that the results could
be quite ugly. The space program, intended as a boost
for nationalist sentiment and to get people to rally
around the current government, will probably be shut
down during the coming political-economic crises. The
next government, trying to create jobs for 100 million
unemployed people without a whole lot of deficit
spending, is unlikely to view a government-sponsored
space program as the solution. Hence, it will get cut.

Do remember that the Japanese made the same kind of
annoucements (space hotels, moon-bases, etc.) about
the time that I moved there in 1991. Of course,
nothing came out of it and NASDA (the Japanese
equivalent to NASA) has the same kind of problems
(defense-like cost overruns, bureaucracy, etc.) as
NASA. So, I have a similiar skepticism of the Chinese
space program.

Maybe, I am wrong. However, I do know enough about
Asian bureaucracy that I think it unlikely that they
will be successful in establishing a moonbase, at
least by 2010.

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