China's Mars ambitions spark cultural phenomenon as space exploration becomes national pride

Cui Tingting dyed her hair the color of rust and iron oxide to mark the moment. On a Wednesday night in February 2021, she sat with members of the China Mars Society in their homes across the country, waiting for word that Tianwen-1—a spacecraft launched seven months earlier—had slipped into orbit around Mars. When the announcement came, they celebrated. One member displayed a replica rover in his living room. Another wore a homemade space suit. A third operated a robot dog. Cui, who directs the local chapter of a global space advocacy network, had organized the gathering as a kind of vigil, a collective holding of breath for a moment she believed would reshape how her country saw itself.

"This is a great era for space, and the future of mankind lies in the exploration of outer space," she said. For Cui, Mars was not simply a destination. It was a symbol—of ambition, of capability, of a nation stepping into a role it believed was rightfully its own.

What was happening in those living rooms across China was part of something larger. Over the past two decades, the ruling Communist Party had pursued an increasingly aggressive agenda in space: launching astronauts into orbit, establishing temporary laboratories in the sky, planning permanent stations. The public had begun to follow. Tourists traveled to Hainan Island to watch rockets ignite. Others visited mock Martian colonies in desert landscapes, complete with white domes, airlocks, and suits. Television shows multiplied. Books appeared. Fan clubs formed. The most popular space-themed account on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, had accumulated 1.25 million followers. The country was, in a real sense, falling in love with space.

The timing was not accidental. President Xi Jinping had made the restoration of Chinese power and prestige a centerpiece of his political project. Space exploration fit neatly into that narrative—a domain where a nation could demonstrate technological mastery, scientific sophistication, and the capacity to dream at scale. The government had launched a five-year Scientific Literacy Action Plan that included support for Chinese science fiction. Beijing announced plans to build an entire industrial cluster dedicated to the genre, designed to attract talent and produce "influential original science fiction works." As Chen Qiufan, a science fiction author in Guangdong, put it: "It's a symbol of power for China." The government understood that films, novels, and imaginative works could broadcast an idea—that China belonged in space, that it had the will and the means to get there, that it would shape the future.

This enthusiasm was not unique to China. The week Tianwen-1 reached Mars, the United Arab Emirates sent its own probe, Amal, into orbit. In Dubai, the government projected images of Mars's two moons across the night sky. The Burj Khalifa glowed red. Billboards advertising the mission towered over highways. In India, one of the country's biggest film stars had led a 2019 blockbuster called "Mission Mangal," inspired by India's own Mars mission. Japan, South Korea, and other nations were sending probes across the solar system. The space race, once a binary contest between Washington and Moscow, had become crowded. The old monopoly was breaking.

China's embrace of space exploration had deep roots in its science fiction tradition. The country's first science fiction novel, "City of Cats," published in 1933, was set on Mars. The genre had withered during the Cultural Revolution, when American and Soviet studios were releasing "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Solaris." But it had roared back to life with Liu Cixin's "The Three-Body Problem," which began as a magazine serial in 2006 and became a global phenomenon. In 2015, Liu became the first Chinese author to win the Hugo Award, science fiction's highest honor. A film adaptation of his novella "The Wandering Earth" had grossed more than $700 million worldwide in 2019. Other writers had followed. Hao Jingfang, who won the Hugo in 2016, had published "Vagabonds," imagining a poverty-free but austere Martian society alongside a poor, crowded, polluted Earth. Luo Lingzuo's "Land Without Borders" depicted Chinese scientists genetically engineering potatoes to grow in Martian soil. A physicist named Liu Yang had written "Orphans of the Red Planet," about high school students on Mars fighting aliens—a work being adapted into a television series.

China had reached certain milestones in its space program. It became the third nation to launch an astronaut into orbit on its own in 2003, four decades after the Soviet Union and the United States. It had launched temporary orbital laboratories in 2011 and 2016. Plans called for a permanent space station after 2022. Officials had once hoped for a crewed lunar mission as early as 2021, but budget and technical constraints had pushed that target to at least 2024. The trajectory was clear: upward, outward, ambitious.

Cui was already planning the next celebration. In May, Tianwen-1's robot lander was scheduled to touch down on the Martian surface. She would gather her society again, and they would wait together. For her, and for millions of others watching from across China, the mission represented something that transcended engineering or science. It was proof that her country belonged among the great powers of the world, that it could reach toward the stars and grasp them. As Chen Qiufan had said, with a note of defiance: "We need to go to space. Then we have the power equivalent to what the United States has, and then we can become the giant."