Of all the odd things China could be up to now, with their moribund economy and demographic meltdown, it seems they are devoting time and resources to looking for aliens. No, not the kind that is coming across our southern border; the "new life and new civilizations," Star Trek kind of aliens.

For several years, China has rapidly ramped up its program to detect alien technology elsewhere in the universe even as the United States' own Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, or SETI, continues its decades-long search of the cosmos.

Neither has proven fruitful yet — indeed, we have never found clear evidence of extraterrestrial life of any kind anywhere in the universe. But to speed up any such discovery, China's Far Neighbour Project, an initiative run out of Beijing Normal University, is setting its sights not only on first contact, but also what to do if and when they achieve that feat.

The team is not modest about their ambition. China joining the search for intelligent alien life "will accelerate the progress of SETI studies and conduct more sensitive observations of a greater number of celestial targets," they write in the paper.

It's unclear what the Chinese intend to do, should they succeed in making contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence - and intelligent life is what the various SETI programs are looking for. But it would be prudent for the aliens to be careful about Chinese efforts to extract information.

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All kidding aside about the Chinese or our own SETI efforts, it's interesting to contemplate what actual contact with another intelligent species would be like. (Full disclaimer: I've done a fair amount of exactly that kind of speculation myself.) If we were visited here by another intelligent species, the fact that they are at a level allowing super-luminal travel, or to allow for the development of some kind of generation ship, either of which would be necessary to cross the vast spaces between stars - well, they would likely be advanced to the point where we would be of no concern to them any more than a passel of ants are to us. All of our vaunted military technology - or China's - probably wouldn't protect us from them, if they came looking for trouble.

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But imagine the implications if we detected a radio signal that turned out to be, inarguably, a, well, signal. It would likely be something as prosaic as our own radio and television transmissions. Granted at interstellar distances these would be almost impossible to detect among all the background noise, but let's posit it even so. What impact would that have on the way we look at the universe? Imagine looking up at the stars and, instead of wondering if anyone was out there looking back, knowing the answer was, yes, there is?

That would be a turning point in human history like few others.

That said, it's far more likely that the first discovery of alien life will be something on the order of microbes, which could be found rather closer to home. For instance, while it is unclear as to whether the Chinese plan to look at Venus, the hellish world's cloud belts are one of the more likely places in our stellar neighborhood to find some kind of life.

Hopefully, any aliens we or the Chinese find will be friendly - or, at least, not hungry.