The Ming dynasty ‘Guide to the Galaxy’: China names 2100 space plan after 1637 book

The US defence secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term, Jim Mattis, repeatedly warned that China would revert to a Ming dynasty-style model, projecting its strong military, technological and economic influence globally.At the time, his views were widely questioned by mainstream academics as too aggressive. A decade ago, China still lagged far behind the United States.But Mattis underestimated China’s ambitions.On January 29, China announced the official launch of a national space resources development programme, an ambitious project spanning nearly a century.According to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the plan is to build a vast interplanetary fleet to extend resource exploration and mining operations to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury and Venus.The project is named after the encyclopaedic work Tiangong Kaiwu (“The Exploitation of the Works of Nature”), published in 1637.