About 10 years ago, Chinese space program was several decades behind. What they had in mind was sending a man into space, and their concept of research is "太空育種", which was extremely embarrassing. Back then, I have chatted with people working in the Chinese space program, and they have never heard of recent explorations to Mars.
The Chang'e program was equally useless in science. These programs were run by engineers, and their concept of science is either "太空育種" or repeating what others did 40 years ago. By the summer of 2014, no paper was published the Chang'e main program, with the following exception:
Astronomers in China begged those in charge of the Chang'e program: after Chang'e rocket finished its lunar program, they used what is considered "useless" and send it to photograph Asteroid 4179, with great scientific results!
This produced a powershift in the Chinese space program. The old engineers are losing control over the direction of the Chinese space program (well, it did not have a direction to begin with), and the Chinese astronomers are taking over (which should be the case from the start). There will be one more Chang'e to go (well, it is partially built already), and in the future, space programs will be more scientifically directed.
Examples:
1. FAST. This will be the largest single radio telescope. Before getting too excited, this will NOT be the largest radio telescope. The square kilometer array will be the largest (FAST has a surface area of only about 0.2 square kilometers). And unfortunately, FAST was not able to join in as the square kilometer array due to some kind of technical issues which was not explained to me clearly.
2. TMT. This will be a 30-meter diameter optical telescope. It is a collaboration of 5 countries (and more may join in). This will be the 2nd largest optical telescope. Three such super large optical telescopes will be built, all with international collaborations.
3. 紫金山天文台主持正在研製一顆X光望遠鏡。這個將是中國發射的第一顆科學望遠鏡，把中國space program從“太空育種”中解放出來。
4. 地麵望遠鏡。中國以前把錢都用到“太空育種”這種偽科學上去了，天文學家一直沒有多少錢建望遠鏡。最大的 general purpose 望遠鏡才2米多（一共隻有2台）。泰國這樣的小國就有1台。1米以上的也隻有10台左右。現在風向轉了，中國科學家慢慢地把錢從“太空育種” 的那幫人手中搶過來了，可以預言，在以後的10年裏，會建更多的地麵望遠鏡（最近中國科大就建了2台1米的望遠鏡）。
