There are things with far more value. Try this one on for size. Easy access to those commmunication satellites for repair, maintence and protection. Who do you want at that helm?
The Moon has a high concentration of rare metals like Titanium. It also has abundant amounts of Silicon and Oxygen. These factors alone make the Moon - eventually, to whoever bothers to develop it - a storehouse of useful materials.
The moon has something else pretty darn valuable in space. It has GRAVITY. Point out somewhere else outside the Earth within a few day's journey with that. It looks increasingly like weightlessness is bad for human physiology. It may be just 1/8 that of earth, but that may be sufficient. There may even be some water there, trapped in rocks or under the surface. If so, that would be an invaluable discovery.
Ignoring the place isn't going to advance our knowledge of it. It is also a stable platform with defensive capabilities, which has both civil and military potential. We may not choose to view it that way, so I suppose the Chinese won't, either?
No, the Moon does not have gold or uranium. It does not have any jewels or bank cd's, either.
Thanks again for the chuckle!
Actually, we have all the uranium we could ever possibly need (it's easily recyclable from existing stocks) and gold is an inert metal, useful as an electrical conductor, but not all that rare on Earth, at least for any useful purpose (I omit its role as a monetary standard, essentially an obsolete usage since early in the last century).
The fallacy in your argument is your assumption that for something to be valuable, we have to import it back to Earth. The key value of lunar resources is their location; they are already in Earth orbit -- on the Moon. As it costs thousands of dollars to launch materials into space from Earth's surface, something already in Earth orbit has intrinsic value merely by virtue of its already being in orbit.
Specifically, what's really valuable on the Moon is the recently discovered water ice deposits in the shadowed areas near the poles of the Moon. Water is much more valuable than its obvious role as something to drink; it is (literally) rocket propellant -- you break down the water molecule into its component hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis, freeze both into their liquid form, and use it to fuel the rocket engines of an Earth-Moon space transportation infrastructure. If you can routinely operate between Earth and Moon, you can also access any orbit in between, including the economically important geosynchronous orbits and the strategically important high-apogee orbits used by our national security apparatus to electronically eavesdrop on our enemies and potential enemies. The ability to easily and routinely move throughout Earth-Moon space is a technical capability worth billions of dollars both to our economy and to our national security.
Right now, no one owns this lunar resource. The USA discovered it, but the first one to get there and start processing it, "owns" it. It ought to be us, not the Chinese.