Taikonauts return to Earth after the longest crewed mission in space (Image: ChinaFotoPress)

China’s new-found footing off-world is changing the rules of today’s space race – find out how the rest of the world is rethinking its strategies

ON 14 December 2013, the top trending topics on China’s biggest social networks were a popular TV show and a football match. If it hadn’t been for a concerted push from China’s state-controlled media, the casual observer might never have noticed that China had just become the third country in the world to land on the moon.

The news was not greeted with sweeping enthusiasm. After all, landing the Yutu robotic rover, aka Jade Rabbit, on Earth’s closest neighbour was a feat human explorers had bagged many decades before. “We’re now only 50 years behind Russia and USA,” quipped one commenter on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. “Our country’s designers have some catching up to do,” wrote another, before worrying that the joke would lead to police detention.

But if China itself seemed a little bored, that was nothing compared with the collective yawn echoing around the world. Apart from failing the novelty test, the mission was accomplished using knock-off equipment, and Yutu was dismissed as a tragic “me too” exercise by a country lagging decades behind the world’s leading space powers.

This common reaction missed the point. Jade Rabbit’s successful launch, landing and exploration is evidence of China’s meteoric rise in the space stakes, and one that will only accelerate. “It is a classic example of the tortoise and the hare,” says Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think …