Could China colonize Mars before America?

A 20-year-old Chinese researcher dressed in a red crayfish costume has become a symbol of Beijing’s ambition. At a scientific conference in Paris last fall, he explained that he was working on an important project. His plans would enable his country’s astronauts to prepare spicy crayfish soup, a Chinese favorite, on Mars.

“That’s what we’re competing with. The vibe is good in Beijing,” Drew Endy, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, said in evidence to a Senate hearing last month. The hearing examined whether the US is losing its innovation advantage to China. Concerned senators saw the big red crayfish as further evidence of the scale of Chinese ambition when it comes to Mars.

It has been more than five years since Tianwen-1, China’s first Mars mission, touched down and deployed a rover called Zhurong, named after a mythical Chinese god of fire. The rover trundled off to explore the landscape of Utopia Planitia, a vast Martian plain, armed with a high-resolution camera and instruments for studying the climate and geology, as American rovers had done before it.

It operated for a year before a planned shutdown for the Martian winter but it never came out of hibernation. Scientists speculate that excessive dust blocked its solar panels. But the rover still operated for longer than planned and the mission confirmed Beijing’s position as a major player in planetary exploration. China is the only nation apart from the US to successfully land on Mars.

If, as David Whitehouse writes, China does beat the US to get its hands on Martian rocks, it will be a Sputnik moment. It will also be the first step in a series of crewed Chinese missions to Mars.

Beijing is planning to begin these missions in as early as 2033, with a view to establishing a permanent base on the planet. China would then become the world’s preeminent space power.

Certainly if they’re the first to build a base, the Chinese would be able to exploit Mars’s resources, such as yttrium and neodymium, unencumbered by American competition. This is China’s explicit aim.

The country sends more rockets into space per year than any other nation. It operates the Tiangong space station, soon to be the largest when the International Space Station is retired in 2030. China has landed on the Moon’s dark side and is building a Starlink-type mega-constellation of satellites at a rapid rate.

Its space budget is estimated at around $20 billion, still a distant second to America’s, which is just shy of $80 billion. However, that Chinese budget is expanding rapidly in spite of a slowing economy – and the precise figure is uncertain because much of the program is opaque and linked to the Chinese military.

However, Beijing has not hidden its ambition to become the leading military power in space, testing anti-satellite weapons and recently a mysterious reusable robotic spacecraft dubbed the “divine dragon.” Its activities, including deploying secret payloads in orbit around Earth, are drawing the attention of US strategists. The People’s Liberation Army sees space as crucial to “first strike” operations during any potential future war.

Beijing deploys the rhetoric of furthering knowledge for mankind – especially in discussing the scientific payoffs of exploring Mars. In reality, the aim of its space program – and the Mars missions in particular – are brutally strategic, serving Beijing’s wider geopolitical ambitions. It is accordingly being given high priority.

When China launched its first satellite in 1970, it broadcast the song “The East is Red” for 20 days before its batteries ran out. Today’s propaganda is not quite as crude, but it still defines Beijing’s space program. Get ready for spicy crayfish soup in space.