After Stalin passed away in 1957, Khrushchev came to power, and the once solid Sino-Soviet relationship began to waver.

Chen Ke's judgment of the world was extremely cold and ruthless, and Comrade Stalin was just the same. Both of these tough leaders believed that Sino-Soviet relations must be maintained strategically, and both believed that only by maintaining it could the good relationship between China and the Soviet Union be preserved. Obviously, Comrade Khrushchev did not have such self-awareness. He perhaps thought that since Comrade Stalin had demanded so much from China materially and China had still satisfied the Soviet Union's requests, then if he agreed to provide China with certain benefits, China would give Khrushchev more support.

Comrade Khrushchev undoubtedly made a wrong judgment on this. Chen Ke supported the Soviet Union undoubtedly for strategic considerations; who was on stage had absolutely no impact on China. When Khrushchev hoped that China would support him personally, he naturally hit a wall. The People's Party opposed Khrushchev's criticism of Comrade Stalin, and the People's Party actually did not approve of the paternalistic management style Khrushchev implemented in Eastern Europe either. After several collisions, problems arose in Sino-Soviet relations.

After hitting a wall in China, in order to win more international status, the scientific layman Khrushchev increased investment in the space race.

The attitude of the United States was another route. After the end of World War II, the US believed that it finally possessed the ability to dominate the globe. At least it was only one step away from dominating the globe. The Bretton Woods system directly pegged the US dollar to gold. Even the Pacific-Indian Ocean Free Trade Zone established by China had to rely on the Bretton Woods system to a large extent.

To possess unparalleled influence, one must have unparalleled strength. In the space race, the United States not only fell behind China, but had not even been able to catch up with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower invested unprecedented resources in the space race. So much so that reports from the technology department claimed it had reached the level where "at this stage, no matter how much more money is invested, there is no way to improve progress by even a tiny bit."

Soon, the momentum of the United States and the Soviet Union in the space race had surpassed that of China. But both countries lacked corresponding electronic technology. By 1959, both the United States and the Soviet Union changed their plans to launch geostationary orbit satellites and turned instead to the plan of landing on the moon. If the moon landing plan could be realized, then all distances from the earth to the moon would no longer be a problem.

Unlike the US and the Soviet Union, China had clear steps for space development. Completely disregarding the competition between the US and the Soviet Union, the Chinese side implemented its plans entirely according to its own schedule.

Moreover, in 1959, China began an action that shook the world. For the Chinese scientific community, China implemented a "Great Purge." This purge was called by many hit Chinese technology figures as comparable to the "Soviet Great Purge." But in reality, this purge did not kill a single person. Except for a dozen or so people who committed suicide after being kicked out of the official scientific community, the purge merely deprived a portion of academic tyrants and privileged factions of the right to apply for projects. If they were willing to continue teaching, they could still continue to work in schools. However, these guys who were once high and mighty felt they could not endure the "humiliation" and left the Chinese science and education community in anger one after another.

The impact of this action was widely debated in the following decades. The more mainstream view decades later was "what was lost in the old guard was gained in the new fields."

The changes in the scientific community were mainly two.

First, a large number of the Republic's peers, and even young people born after 1930, became the backbone of academia. They were a generation that grew up completely accepting the education of the new industrial era. Not only were they younger, but they also largely lacked the air of academic tyranny. The academic atmosphere of the Republic was greatly improved.

The other change was that private enterprises finally had the strength to fight for some projects they originally had absolutely no ability to fight for. The Republic's private enterprises had always been mainly in the service industry. After the People's Party's rapid industrialization, the national industrial capital of the old era went bankrupt one after another in the competition. Those who could linger on were all low-tech industries abandoned by the People's Party. After breaking away from the People's Party's education system, these former academic tyrants united with national capital, and a small number of them successfully intervened in some technical projects that the People's Party wanted to abandon but national capital was fundamentally unable to undertake. And this part of the projects was originally projects in which Japan gradually gained an advantage in competition.

Although entrepreneurs have to go through a terrible elimination rate, after someone succeeds, it undoubtedly inspires more followers. After more than thirty years of decline, Chinese private enterprises finally had a chance to make a comeback.

But this did not have a direct impact on the space race. By 1961, when the United States and the Soviet Union were frantically increasing their delivery capabilities and striving to approach the moon step by step, China's first generation of meteorological satellites had been completed. A very rough global positioning system also began research and development.

After nearly ten years of silence, China began a new wave of launch climaxes with development efficiency far higher than that of the US and the Soviet Union and development costs significantly lower than that of the US and the Soviet Union.

After the advent of computer CAD systems and engineering simulation systems, the Chinese space R&D center, which already placed great emphasis on paper derivation, was like a tiger with wings added. If originally it was just paper calculation 20 times, now it is direct calculation 200 times. And the engineering parameters are several times more complex than before.