The landing "lifted the mysterious veil" of the far side of the moon and "opened a new chapter in human lunar exploration", the agency said in a statement on its website, which included a wide-angle colour picture of a crater from the moon's surface.
The probe, which has a lander and a rover, touched down at a targeted area near the moon's south pole in the Von Karman Crater after entering the moon's orbit in mid-December.
The tasks of the Chang'e-4 include astronomical observation, surveying the moon's terrain, landform and mineral makeup, and measuring the neutron radiation and neutral atoms to study the environment of its far side. The control centre in Beijing will decide when to let the rover separate from the lander, state news agency Xinhua said.
"It's an important milestone for China's space exploration," Wu Weiren, chief designer of the lunar exploration programme, said, according to Xinhua. The probe also took six live species - cotton, rapeseed, potato, arabidopsis, fruit fly and yeast - to the lifeless environment to form a mini biosphere, Xinhua said.
A MAJOR SPACE POWER The landing is the latest step for China in its race to catch up with Russia and the United States and become a major space power by 2030. Beijing plans to launch construction of its own manned space station next year.
While China has insisted its ambitions are purely peaceful, the U.S. Defense Department has accused it of pursuing activities aiming to prevent other nations from using space-based assets during a crisis. Besides its civilian ambitions, China has tested anti-satellite missiles and the U.S. Congress has banned NASA from two-way cooperation with its Chinese counterpart over security concerns.
As competition accelerates in space, U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to create a new "Space Force" by 2020, as the sixth branch of the military.