RED MOOON RISING

Landing a probe on the dark side of the Moon in secret is ominous proof of China’s global ambition. In this chilling analysis by a top intelligence expert, EDWARD LUCAS argues we must wake up to a threat now greater than Russia’s — before it’s too late...

WHEN the Apollo 11 spacecraft was orbiting the Moon prior to the first lunar landing, Nasa officials told the astronauts on board to look out for the ‘lovely girl with a big rabbit’.

They were jokingly referring to a story from Chinese mythology in which the goddess Chang’e escapes Earth to live on the Moon with her pet, Jade Rabbit.

This week, almost 50 years on from that ‘giant leap for mankind’, the legend of Chang’e resurfaced — and this time the joke is on the Americans as China announced it had became the first nation to land a spacecraft on the ‘dark side of the moon’. The robotic probe was named Chang’e 4, a product of China’s £3.9 billion a year space exploration project.

If ever there was a metaphor for the Communist super-power’s obsessive secrecy and soaring global ambition, then this audacious secret mission provides it. And it should be no less a wake up call to the West than the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite was in 1957.

Let me explain: for generations, the Kremlin’s technological clout and military might meant that every other threat came second. The space race, the arms race, the worldwide battle to contain Communism — these were the hallmarks of the terrifying decades of the Cold War.

I grew up sharing the fears of many that the Communist bloc would triumph, consigning the free world to the servitude and repression that reigned behind the Iron Curtain. Now I fear we face a similar threat from a rising China.

Today, the regime in Beijing may seem a distant threat compared to the Putin plutocracy in Moscow, which menaces our allies and meddles in our politics. But the truth is that China is a far more serious adversary.

The moonshot on January 3 underlines its growing dominance in space technology, with a manned space station in orbit by 2022. Its capabilities already include ‘killer satellites ‘which could destroy the West’s own orbiting electronic ears and eyes, and new space-guided missiles.

China has also leapfrogged the West in artificial intelligence — software that allows robots to plan ahead and learn from mistakes. But the most pressing threat now is to the security of our computers and networks, and to the commercial and personal data they store and exchange.

In a blistering warning before Christmas, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson highlighted the danger of Britain’s dependence on the Chinese high-tech giant Huawei, which is closely tied to a regime he described as ‘sometimes malign’. HE expressed ‘grave’ concerns about the firm providing technology to upgrade Britain’ s mobile phone services to the new 5G wireless communications standard.

The 5G technology offers, among other things, dazzlingly fast data downloads — a boon to so many Britons plagued by slow, unreliable broadband services. It will also be central to the so- called ‘internet of things’ in which devices ranging from heating thermostats to motor vehicles will seamlessly connect and interact, cutting costs and improving the quality of our daily lives.

The great flaw in this sciencefiction vision of the future, however, is that Huawei — founded by a former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army — is the world leader in the technology required.

Cyber- security experts fear that its products may include hidden features that would allow the Chinese regime to sabotage our systems or steal data from them.

To be fair, Huawei denies any wrongdoing. To date nobody has found anything amiss with the technology it sells. But the fact remains that some of our closest allies, including the U. S., refuse to certify the Chinese company’s products as suitable for their critical national infrastructure.

In Britain, we continue to fudge this issue.

A special team of experts based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, which includes retired staff from GCHQ (the Government cyber- espionage agency in Cheltenham), evaluates Huawei products before they are cleared for release in sensitive UK installations. But given the complexity of chips and software, and the mysterious way that even seemingly innocent features can be made to interact, the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre offers little reassurance.

Indeed, the latest report by the centre’s oversight board states cryptically: ‘Technical issues have been identified in Huawei’s engineering processes, leading to new risks in the UK telecommunications networks’. It gives no further details.

Mobile phone technology aside, the Chinese state company China General Nuclear ( CGN) is heavily involved in Britain’s nuclear energy industry through its investment in the construction of Hinkley Point in Somerset which will provide electricity for around six million homes.

It is also potentially involved in new nuclear power stations in Bradwell, Essex, and Sizewell in Suffolk. In short, Britain and (many of its allies) face a dilemma between national security and modernising our economy using Chinese know-how.

The head of MI6, Alex Younger, is just one of several senior officials to have sounded the alarm. He hinted last month that Britain should follow New Zealand and other countries in banning Chinese technology in the most critical parts of national infrastructure.

While our ministers dither, a sharp confrontation is already raging between the U.S. and China over related issues. Acting on an American extradition warrant, the Canadian authorities recently arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer. Meng Wanzhou is one of China’s most powerful women, and in theory, she was arrested for failing to cooperate with U.S. sanctions on Iran. But most observers see her detention (followed by a speedy release on bail) as a