The news that China has landed an explorer robot on the dark side of the Moon has echoed across the global media, a sign of the country's growing prominence on the international stage. Let's face it, space is still a sexy topic. And there is something rather fascinating about China - a non-Western global power - making the achievement. It feels like a turning of the page.

Western powers have dominated modern economics, sciences and political ideologies for so long that they implicitly set standards for what marks a civilised power. Space exploration remains a benchmark.

The Chinese government has sought to draw attention to the robot Moon landing, celebrating it as a step forward not just for China but for all mankind. However, while the rise of its space programme is indeed a positive development, it comes at an odd time in China's own history, a moment when the country seems beset by historic contradictions and tensions.

It is an age when the economic relationship between the US and China – once the engine of global growth – has become dominated by a trade war and military competition.

While China has long insisted that its rise would be a peaceful one, the Moon landing and the technology that undergirds it have been driven by what some scholars have called techno-nationalism.

Accordingly, under the terms of President Xi Jinping's "China Dream", national rejuvenation will be the result of technological prowess – something that has driven its cyber-hacking and mercantilist policies.

We cannot ignore the fact that China has the most rapidly growing military presence in space. A US defence department report noted last year that, since it tested anti-satellite weapons in 2007, China's ability to take out US satellites has burgeoned, with near-space unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), satellite jammers, and a "vast ground infrastructure".

Many of these systems are developed as "counter-space" technologies, in which China might deny other powers the ability to use space in a crisis or conflict.

The Trump administration announcing last summer that it would create a "space force" reveals the seriousness with which Washington views such developments. Outer space is a new frontier for warfare.

Given President Xis insistence that Taiwan "must and will be" reunited with the mainland, and the US commitment to defend it, a space conflict may no longer be merely in the realm of imagination.

So, while we should all celebrate human progress in space, I can't help but wonder if we're simply taking our problems up there.