Why is Japan, China, and India engaged in a space race to the Moon?

Western analysts seem to believe that India's resurgent space programme is a reaction to China's growing success in the field. But Indian officials deny this, saying its programme is entirely based on India's own needs.
For quite sometime now western space analysts have been projecting the view that India is competing with its neighbouring Communist giant China in the race to dominate the final frontier. India's Chandrayaan-1 mission to orbit the moon, launched in October 2008 and China's first lunar probe Chang'e-1, which orbited in October 2007, have been described as exercises to boost the national prestige of the two most populous Asian countries.

Both countries have a firm eye on the moon's resources. While India has hinted at its eventual aim of mining for lunar resources, China is thinking of setting up a base on the moon. Interestingly, both India and China have announced plans to send a landing mission to the moon in the first half of the next decade. But while China is edging close to firming up its plan for a manned landing mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation has made it clear that a manned moon landing project would be taken up only if it is ''totally justified''.
At the moment, a manned mission to the moon is not on the radar of ISRO. But on more than one occasion its chairman G Madhavan Nair has driven home the point that India should keep up its space exploration drive. ''As far as space is concerned, India can be described as a developed country,'' Nair has quipped.

But China could probably steal a march where a manned mission is concerned. Michael Griffin, the outgoing chief of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has expressed the view that China could well attempt a manned lunar orbit flight.