That's not going to happen. At least not due to China's space program. Manned spaceflight in China is a program of national prestige (though that's no differen

That's not going to happen. At least not due to China's space program. Manned spaceflight in China is a program of national prestige (though that's no different than any other country). But because of China's culture, their government, and the fact that almost all of what they are doing in spaceflight is retreading old ground they have been and will continue to be extremely cautious, moving at a slow pace. China's first manned spaceflight was a decade ago. In that time they've launched a grand total of 5 manned missions. Recently they've accelerated to a rate of about one every year. Meanwhile, they plan to spend the next decade slowly building a larger space station (similar to Mir though with only 3 permanent modules) and developing automated resupply spacecraft. They aren't trying to trailblaze new eras of space exploration, they're just trying to play the manned spaceflight game to show that they are a country capable of doing so. Fortunately though there will be considerable competition among private companies in the US, in both launch vehicles and manned spaceflight. Two companies have already developed unmanned cargo resupply vessels (though Orbital has not yet fully demonstrated theirs yet), at least 3 companies are building manned spacecraft for putting crew in orbit, and several companies are working on yet more advanced technologies for sending crews beyond Earth.