Spacex is in fact building multiple launch complexes, buys suits on the open market, trains crews, pays to use the networks created for that purpose, has an autonomous docking system (which NASA and Russia limits – currently – to close in station-keeping).

Spacex will in a matter of months be launching the most powerful rocket in the world and has clients under contract.

China is planning to build a small station somewhere around 2020.

Spacex and Bigelow are now taking orders for giant stations to be in service in the 2014-2017 time period.
Plans are being made for lunar, L-point and Mars missions.

China, hobbled by an inefficient clumsy centralized system, drenched in corruption, and crushing in its violent repression of its own people, suppressing all channels of free thought and expression, can never hope to compete over time.

SpaceX has accomplished much too, on a relatively shoestring budget. They’ve not launched humans, but are on the path to doing so. They are behind the Chinese, but if they continue on their current path they may indeed find themselves in a serious competition with them, especially since neither the USA’s NASA, Russia’s RSA, Europe’s ESA nor the Japanese space group appear to be stepping up their effort. The only players currently trying hard to move forward are China, India and SpaceX.

It is no wonder that many in the USA are getting enthusiastic about SpaceX as a proxy for them, seeing as NASA isn’t doing much at all regarding human space flight.