China lands rover on Mars
I&#x27;m a Chinese guy and I don&#x27;t like this at all. Here&#x27;s some Chinese perspective:<p>1. The CNSA is severely underfunded in recent years, to the extent that a considerable amount of space tech graduates went directly into other more &quot;lucrative&quot; fields such as the IT industry.<p>2. This landing operation was not announced beforehand. This is a bit unusual, when compared to the past operations, e. g. the first manned space flight, where the national news network kept broadcasting the whole event. The CNSA seemed a little unconfident about it.<p>3. This year is the 100th anniversary for the CCP.<p>4. Given 1, 2 and 3, and how things work in the PRC, this Mars landing thing is more likely a &quot;present&quot; for the CCP anniversary, intended to strive for more funding. If the operation failed, they&#x27;d probably postpone the whole announcement till a more &quot;proper&quot; time, since nobody even know they tried to land the rover.<p>So, the current atmosphere in the CNSA may be a little tense. A failure may make them lose their already-tiny funding, and they did this (at this timing) to please the CCP in order to get more support. I respect all those engineers and scientists who made the marvel achievement, but this is not a pretty scene. And as a Chinese, I don&#x27;t like it at all.