Space should be the next frontier targeted by China’s tech industry

Over the past few years, China’s largest tech companies – Tencent, Alibaba, etc. – have been on a massive investment kick. For example, in 2014 Alibaba invested in everything from maps to apps to soccer teams, and Tencent bought into a litany of new industries including virtual reality and film production. And individually, China’s wealthiest tech CEOs – guys like Lei Jun and Jack Ma – have also been splashing a lot of cash over the past few years. But there’s one area they haven’t really touched: space.

Space may seem like an odd avenue for investment, since any hope for returns lies in the distant future and there are plenty of problems that need fixing right here on earth. But some of the top figures in the Silicon Valley tech scene are already putting big money into space. There’s Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for example, which Google just made a massive investment in. And there’s Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, which is expected to begin test flights this year.

So why should Chinese tech companies and their founders care about the space race?

Because they need to keep up with the Joneses. If there’s one trend that’s become increasingly obvious over the past year, it’s that China’s tech companies want to compete globally. And while we’re years, probably decades, away from space ventures like SpaceX actually being profitable, developing space technology takes a long time, and it’s a lot more difficult to emulate than a mobile app. If China’s tech companies don’t want to be left out of the private-company space race, they need to get into the game soon.

Because our future is in space. Physicist Stephen Hawking says that humans need to leave earth and colonize space in the next 200 years: “Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space.” China’s tech CEOs ought to be more familiar than most with the risks of putting all of humanity’s eggs in one basket given the environmental devastation and violent social turmoil China has experienced over the past century. We’re obviously not ready to colonize other planets yet, but more private investment in space now could help ensure that we do reach that point before a natural (or not-so-natural) disaster eliminates our species.

Because there are massive profits waiting. Sure, investing in space is a very long-term play, but the eventual gains could be spectacular, especially in resource collection given that the universe’s resources are almost literally infinite. And since very few governments and companies have the money to invest in space programs, competition in these areas is likely to be fairly slim, meaning that everyone who gets involved has a good chance of profiting over the long haul.

Because they have the money for long-term investments. Sure, researching space tech is absurdly expensive and the returns lie only in the distant future. But China’s top tech founders and firms all have the money to get involved if they want to. Lei Jun, Robin Li, Jack Ma, Pony Ma, and Li Hejun all rank well above Elon Musk on the Forbes billionaires list. These are the guys who are in the best position to take Asia’s tech companies to the stars right now, if they feel so inclined. They already have plenty of shorter-term investments in their earthly portfolios and taking on a longer-term project like space travel isn’t going to bankrupt any of them.

China’s biggest tech companies have already proved they can compete with and even best Western tech firms in everything from app creation to smartphone sales. They’re getting involved in new industries from futuristic AI research to traditional film production. The next step, I sincerely hope, will be to follow Western tech companies to the stars.