The Chinese government on Thursday announced an ambitious five-year plan for space exploration that would move China closer to becoming a major rival at a time when the American program is in retreat.

The plan calls for further development of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (similar to GPS), which on Tuesday began providing navigation, positioning, and timing data on China and surrounding areas. China intends to have a global system by 2020, with 35 satellites in orbit.
On deep-space exploration, the paper said China planned to launch orbiters that would make soft lunar landings and do roving and surveying. After that, the paper said, China will collect samples of the moon’s surface and bring them back for analysis.