Yeah in theory China is the biggest potential competitor, having both a space program, a state deeply involved in business, etc. But their space tech is archaic in comparison, using really nasty fuels to blast stuff into space. The reusability of SpaceX's rockets is a feat that is years ahead of the competition - it's been nearly ten years since the first recovered Falcon 9 booster in a commercial launch if my quick fact check is accurate, and no other competitor, private or governmental, has managed it yet. And in a few years they will have a reusable vessel capable of launching 100 tonnes into LEO, at a fraction of the development and launch cost of e.g. the Space Shuttle.

Unless of course Musk's political fuckery ends up dismantling SpaceX. But, Musk didn't do the engineering on these feats, so the knowledge and patents will continue on if he doesn't.

PRC didn't take reusables seriously until a few years ago, really when strategic value of starlink became obvious. They're already making relatively quick progress, as in the expected faster than original catchup mode progress.

Ultimately the issue with simping for SpaceX is that it's still an American company working at American scale. People are conflating SpaceX doing cheap payload advantage at modest scale for actual scale. There's like <20 F9s doing more than 50% of global launches, 80% including starlink. People see 50% and 80%, but ignore that <20 is rookie numbers. Frankly no reason PRC won't have 100 reusables fleet _IF_ demand justifies it (TBH only real justification after megaconstellations is space weaponization). And then like with all PRC catchup, they'll put more than SpaceX lifetime aggregate payload in a few years, and then it won't even be close. Sure Elon can wank about starfactory building 1 vehicle per day, but if there's strategic reasons for it, PRC will be able to build 5 per day at less cost once they sort out the tech stack.