The reasons for the new scenario of confrontation chosen by Beijing to battle Washington

The world's expectation that only four days ago was focused on the launch of the first Martian probe from Japan has moved to China just a few hours ago for a similar reason. 

Beijing has just launched the Long March 5 rocket with the 5-tonne Tianwen-1 on board. This is a mission that inaugurates the ambitions of the great Asian country on the Red Planet, which is several days ahead of the Mars 2020 project that the United States will put into orbit within a week. 

President Xi Jinping's commitment to the exploration of Mars opens the door to a new scenario of rivalry with the United States, which joins the technological, commercial and economic domains and the control of military matters which, together with the military in the land, naval, air and space fields, are the main points of friction with Washington in the global geostrategic framework.  

But why does Xi Jinping stand up to Donald Trump in an attempt to wrest the supremacy he holds in interplanetary exploration from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)? The answer is very simple. Because he can and he wants to. Today's space launch poses a clear challenge in the field of exploration of the cosmos and, specifically, of Mars, as a corollary to the race that already exists between the two countries to return astronauts to the Moon. 

The authorities in Beijing have defined a long-term strategy whose horizon of 30 years and beyond is to set foot on the Red Planet and demonstrate to the whole world the enormous potential of its science and technology. In short, to become the world's de facto great superpower and to strengthen and consolidate its international prestige and influence in all areas.

Another compelling reason for entering fully into space exploration, whether of the Moon, Mars or the rest of the cosmos, is to enhance the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party as the privileged conductor of the society of a multi-ethnic country plagued by problems of all kinds arising from its unbalanced growth.

The third reason is to strengthen its market for launching and building satellites, a task it intends to continue expanding in the international arena. With an industry in which hundreds of thousands of technicians work, with a large state business network that has given way to private initiative and with four launch centres, its domestic market is small. 

There is no doubt that, just as the Emirates is trying to do with Al Amal spaceship, China wants to successfully place its Tianwen-1 probe around Mars, which in Mandarin means "questions to heaven". But unlike the Arab country, it also intends to place and roll a 240-kilogram, six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle on the surface of Mars. And these are big words, because more than half of the attempts have ended in fiasco. 

If China succeeds with the Tianwen-1 mission, it will be quite a feat. Neither the United States nor India, which are already on Mars, bet at the beginning of their Mars exploration on positioning an orbiter, a surface module and an all-terrain vehicle at the same time, as it is China's claim. 

In the case of the North American NASA, it first sent orbiters around the planet, then small laboratories that settled down but lacked movement capacity. Only later were autonomous all-terrain vehicles positioned, whose weight, dimensions and scientific capabilities increased with each new mission. India follows the same path and maintains a spacecraft that studies the planet from orbit.

Beijing, on the other hand, wants to do everything in unison, applying the new technologies developed by its engineers. This is the way Xi Jinping dreams of laying the foundations for his millenary nation to join the less than half a dozen countries that belong to the First Division of the world's space sector, led by the United States.  

The Martian mission Tianwen-1 is entirely Chinese. But Xi Jinping has managed to get several European countries to join his project. Some of the scientific instruments on board the orbiter and the all-terrain vehicle have involved research centres in Austria and France, whose leaders, Sebastian Kurz and Emmanuel Macron, respectively, are keen to strengthen their presence and business with Beijing. 

The Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences has contributed the orbiter magnetometer, while scientists from the Research Institute for Astrophysics and Planetology in France have helped develop the laser spectroscopy equipment that travels in the all-terrain. This is something the Chinese could have done on their own, but they wanted to show that they are open to international cooperation.  

Argentina and the European Space Agency (ESA) will also contribute to the success of Tianwen-1. The South American country will do so through the large 35-meter antenna that China has built in Neuquén, south of Patagonia. Its mission in relation to the Martian spacecraft Tianwen-1 is key. It consists of sending orders by telecommand and receiving telemetry and data captured by the probe on its way to the Red Planet and during its stay in orbit around it. ESA will also contribute in the same way, with the deep space antenna network, one of which is located at the Cebreros satellite tracking station near Madrid. 

One of the ways in which the Chinese Administration appreciates the cooperation of the three countries mentioned above and of the European Agency is by placing the logos of the space agencies of Argentina (CONAE), Austria (FFA) and France (CNES) and ESA on the top of the Long-Range 5 launcher. This is an unusual detail that shows the interest of the Chinese authorities in encouraging the participation of other countries in the space programmes it leads.