If China sets up the first permanent Moon base, it could easily upend the US-sponsored Artemis Accords on lunar colonisation and take control of part of the Moon. Its behaviour in Antarctica already shows how.
In 2020, the United States, together with its key partners in space exploration, drew up the Artemis Accords to expand on the provisions of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The goal was to create principles that would facilitate the colonisation of the Moon. One of the key provisions of the accords is a licence for lunar operators to establish ‘safety zones’ around their activities ‘to avoid harmful interference.’ While 43 countries have signed the Artemis Accords, China and Russia rejected them and are building alternative frameworks for the Moon race.
But the stalemate under the Antarctic Treaty over China’s 2013 request for an Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA) around its Kunlun Station on Dome A should inform the Artemis Accords. ASMAs are Antarctica’s equivalent of lunar safety zones. The denial of China’s request for an ASMA is now reducing the effectiveness of decision-making in several areas of the Antarctica Treaty System (ATS). Even the simplest of measures to protect the emperor penguin are becoming impossible to achieve.
Deconflicting lunar activities is central to the Artemis Accords because most space exploration programs are targeting the Moon’s south pole, where scientists believe craters could be an excellent water source. With major uncertainties surrounding the distribution of water reserves across the Moon, disputes between rival space powers over colonisation sites is likely. In fact, in 2022 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration published a list of 13 candidate sites for Moon landings by the Artemis program, all near the south pole, and some reports suggest that China is considering some of the same areas.
Under the Outer Space Treaty, no country can reserve or make a territorial claim on the Moon or any other celestial body, but the Artemis Accords’ ‘safety zones’ are the closest any legal agreement has come to establishing some degree of sovereignty or at least autonomy on parts of the Moon. The accords obligate parties to notify and coordinate their activities with the holder of the safety zone.
But, as Michelle Hanlon, director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, rightly asks, what if China were to beat the US to the Moon? ‘Then China might say: “You had a great idea of safety zones and we’re here on the south pole where all the water is. We need a 40 km safety zone.” ’
Back on Earth, that is indeed the story of China’s Kunlun Station, which in 2009 became the first station to be placed on Antarctica’s Dome A. That’s the highest ice dome on the Antarctic Plateau and the coldest point on Earth, and it offers the clearest view from our planet of stars in our galaxy. In 2013, China requested the creation of an ASMA to encompass its Kunlun Station as well as its research and monitoring sites. The goal was to give China a greater say in the management of the area. The ATS states that ‘any area, including any marine area, where activities are being conducted or may in the future be conducted, may be designated as an Antarctic Specially Managed Area to assist in the planning and … coordination of activities, avoid possible conflicts, improve co-operation between Parties or minimise environmental impacts.’
The Chinese proposal has been systematically rejected by the consultative parties to the ATS on the grounds that no other activities are taking place in the vicinity and that the deconfliction question does not arise. China’s response has essentially been to argue that nothing under the ATS rules out a precautionary approach.
The dismissal of its request has been a major source of disappointment for Beijing, since the conquest of Dome A had been viewed with great pride in China. At the time, China’s official Xinhua news agency wrote that ‘while Americans built Amundsen–Scott Station in the South Pole, [and] Russians established Vostok Station in the southern Pole of Cold, China now operates Chinese Kunlun in the highest point of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.’
In the face of repeated objections, China proposed replacing the ASMA with a Code of Conduct for Exploration and Research—a compromise—but consultative parties have been quick to point out that China can regulate only the conduct of its own researchers and that it has no jurisdiction over other Antarctic programs. Since then, China has repeatedly obstructed various unrelated decisions under the ATS.
In total, only seven ASMAs have been designated under the ATS, reflecting the controversy that surrounds them since they are seen as conferring some degree of sovereignty in a continent where all territorial claims have been frozen.
If the Antarctic experience is anything to go by, lunar deconfliction will not be achieved by legal provisions alone. Diplomacy will have to remain central to the management of new frontiers.