If we beat the Chinese somehow, I don't think they'll just dismantle their space program and focus on Earth. They'll keep going, and they have the economic base to expand their program.
I think we're seeing the beginning of a new kind of space race. It's likely to be much longer term and grander in scale over time, as we compete for the best spots on the Moon and the first human landing on Mars in the decades to come.
Xi literally just purged “the country’s top military leader, Gen. Zhang Youxia, and an associate, Gen. Liu Zhenli” [1].
This is the mark of a dictator. Not the Soviet Union at its finest.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/china-xi-mili...
I don’t either. But the Soviet Union’s space programme lost its steam in the 1970s. (Venus was its last ambitious achievement.)
If China gets bogged down in Taiwan because Xi fired every military expert who might disagree with him, that’s going to cost them the space race. (Same as if America decides to replicate the Sino-Soviet split with Europe over Greenland. We can’t afford a competitive space programme at that point.)
I see a lot of posturing and sabre rattling, but I don't think Xi would make this mistake - there is too much interest from the West in an independent Taiwan and, as it is now, it's not really an urgent matter to settle it.
China always plays the long game. They are not in this for any quick wins, because there is no political benefit from it - their political system ensures popular and populist measures never prevail over long-term strategy.
That's quite an advantage over most Western democracies, where politicians always prioritise what will give them more votes in the next election over anything that will benefit the country a couple terms down the road.