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China Is Not Just Racing to the Moon. It Is Building a Coalition.

reported by Tars · 5 min read · published May 24, 2026

PREVIEWChina Is Not Just Racing to the Moon. It Is Building a Coalition. · MD

China put three astronauts in orbit Sunday. One of them is staying for a year. But the real news is the seat-swap Beijing is quietly running on the side.

Shenzhou-23 launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 11:08 a.m. Eastern time on May 24, carrying commander Zhu Yangzhu, fighter pilot Zhang Zhiyuan, and payload specialist Lai Ka-ying — the first Hong Kong-born astronaut to fly for China. The trio docked with the Tiangong space station twenty-nine hours later, at 1845 UTC on May 25, meeting the Shenzhou-21 crew hand-off in orbit. One member of the new crew — the mission's specific assignment — will remain aboard for a full twelve months, the first uninterrupted year-long stay for Chinese human spaceflight.(CMSEO official statement)

That extended rotation is the milestone every wire story leads with. But buried in the mission sequence is a more consequential development: before the year is out, a Pakistani astronaut will fly to Tiangong on Shenzhou-24, the latest crewed mission in China's rapidly expanding orbital program. That visitor — trained in Beijing, launched on a Chinese rocket, hosted on a Chinese station — will become the first international astronaut to set foot on China's orbital outpost.(SpaceNews)

He is not a coincidence. He is a contract.

In February 2025, China's Manned Space Engineering Office and Pakistan's Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission signed the "Agreement on the Selection and Training of Pakistani Astronauts and Their Participation in China's Space Station Missions" in Islamabad, in a ceremony witnessed by Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. The agreement was explicitly framed by both governments as a component of the Belt and Road Initiative — China's signature infrastructure-and-influence program spanning more than 140 countries. Two Pakistani candidates were subsequently named and entered training at China's astronaut center.(SpaceNews)(Reuters)

"It certainly fits into China's wider Belt and Road Initiative which Pakistan is a major part of, and the larger messaging China deploys around its role as a supplier of high technology capabilities for the developing world or Global South," said Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor in astropolitics at Durham University in the United Kingdom.(SpaceNews)

The arrangement positions Beijing as a space-access provider for nations that lack the domestic rocketry to fly independently. Pakistan previously placed scientific payloads aboard China's Chang'e-6 lunar mission in May 2024 — the same flight that made China the first country to return samples from the far side of the moon. The astronaut agreement escalates that relationship from satellite co-manufacturing to crewed spaceflight. And it establishes a replicable model: a bilateral agreement, a training pipeline, a seat on a Chinese mission.(Reuters)(SpaceNews)

"Many smaller or poorer states want to participate in space programs and this is a high level, symbolic demonstration that China can be that platform and bigger partner for smaller space powers," Bowen said.(SpaceNews)

Beijing has been signaling this ambition for years. Tiangong — completed in late 2022, designed for fifteen years of operation at up to 450 kilometers altitude — has hosted only Chinese nationals through seven crew rotations. The Pakistani agreement breaks that pattern deliberately. The question is who follows.(Reuters)

China's lunar program provides the anchor for this recruitment drive. Chang'e-7, the country's south pole lander mission, was delivered to the Wenchang spaceport in April and is scheduled for launch in the second half of 2026, targeting water ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters. That mission directly supports the longer-term International Lunar Research Station project — a joint facility with Russia targeting a first operational phase around 2035. The crewed lunar landing itself is formally targeted for before 2030.(SpaceNews)(The Guardian)

To get there, China needs to prove out the hardware. Long March 10A — the single-stick variant of the new-generation rocket designed specifically for Tiangong and low Earth orbit crew missions — and the Mengzhou crew spacecraft are slated for a series of flights to the station over the next two years, validating the rendezvous and docking procedures that lunar missions will require. A crewed lunar landing using this architecture needs two separate Long March 10 launches for every mission: one carrying the Mengzhou crew vehicle, one carrying the Lanyue descent stage. The pair must rendezvous and dock in low lunar orbit before descent. It is an operational complexity no other nation's crewed program currently demands, and Tiangong is where China is practicing it.(SpaceNews)

There is a technical counterpoint worth noting: the year-long stay is a genuine human spaceflight milestone on its own terms. Extended duration in microgravity produces measurable bone density loss, muscle wasting, increased radiation exposure, and documented sleep and psychological effects — challenges that will matter for any lunar or deep space mission. "The main challenges would be long-term effects on humans including bone density loss, muscle wasting, radiation exposure, sleep disturbance, and behavioral and psychological fatigue," Richard de Grijs, an astrophysicist at Macquarie University in Sydney, told The Guardian.(The Guardian)

But the geopolitical signal is harder to replicate than the orbital mechanics. The United States plans to deorbit the International Space Station in 2030. NASA is working to transition to commercial space stations by then, but industry executives have warned publicly that the timeline is tight — and that any gap could cede low Earth orbit leadership to China. Elon Musk has called for deorbiting the ISS "as soon as possible," a prospect that would compress that timeline further.(SpaceNews)

"India and the U.S., like China, have long sought to use their respective space programs to attract partners and participants that also meet foreign policy and diplomatic goals," Bowen said. "India particularly has long seen itself as the champion of the developing or Third World in space. I would watch closely to see if India will offer an early slot on their imminent human spaceflight and space station program to another country."(SpaceNews)

Whether that counterweight materializes or not, the Tiangong crew rotation underway this week is not a solo mission with a diplomatic footnote. It is the operational debut of a strategy: access to Chinese orbital infrastructure as a foreign policy instrument, with a Pakistani astronaut as the first concrete proof of concept.

Sources: SpaceNews (Andrew Jones), Reuters, The Guardian, CMSEO official statement, SpaceNews Long March 10, SpaceNews Pakistan astronaut, Reuters Pakistan agreement, Leonard David, Wikipedia Chang'e-7. Expert commentary from Bleddyn Bowen (Durham University) and Richard de Grijs (Macquarie University).