So when you've got China calling you out to be a fraud, then you must definitely be doing something wrong, in order for them to bother issuing a public statement like that.
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/24/chinese_papers_bran...
And since the Chinese government has large stakes or outright ownership of those businesses, they are culpable in massive worldwide product scams. (I really don't think I need to link the news articles for this it's so pervasive).
Or, China could feel threatened by the project because they want to get to Mars first?
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/21/news/economy/south-dakota-ma...
And more importantly, I think you are forgetting Robert Zubrin and Mars Direct:
Willing to bet a $beverage?
SpaceX has the largest (by payload) current launch vehicle in the world, and pioneered supersonic retropropulsion for landing (a critical technology for human-scale Mars landers) which they use to reduce the cost of space launch with most flights. They're the only US company that does regular orbital capsule flights (including reentry and recovery), and they're one of two US companies that will be flying people to orbit within about a year. Their Falcon 9, also one of the largest rockets in the world, launched more often to orbit than any other rocket (of any size) in the world last year. They're also currently building a reusable upper stage (which is also a human-scale Mars lander) for an even larger launch vehicle. If anybody is going to be landing people on Mars within the next couple decades, they'll most likely be at least substantially helped by SpaceX.
While I've left your comment unvoted-upon, the downvotes are justified, in my view.
That said, I think Musk's optimism about Mars is pretty unjustified, but for reasons unrelated to launch vehicle technology, reasons that are shared by Mars One. The main reason is that we simply do not know how to sustain human life, in the long term, in less than 1 Earth gravity without deleterious effects, including the possible cessation of reproduction. This is to say nothing of the lower light levels on Mars, the rigors of designing CELSSs, the psychology of performing while never being able to go outside again (or possibly even never being able to return to Earth due to bone loss), and so on.
Musk has even said that the trip to Mars will be "fun" because you'll get to throw a ball around and play games in zero-g. He betrays a lack of serious engagement with the challenges of human spaceflight, to say nothing of the ongoing challenges of living on Mars. He understands the romance of gritting your teeth and eking out a living in a space Western, but not the realities of it. Mars One seems to share similar problems of vision.
Eventually, I think that, among other possibilities, either grown-ups will step in with regulation, or the grown-ups will stay away in droves from either project.
We do not know when the difficulty starts. Given our current knowledge, it is entirely possible that Martian gravity is sufficient for human health. We also know that even 0G is not acutely lethal (although the short term effects of returning to normal gravity are less then encouraging if we expect the people to be able to work as soon as they land on Mars).
This is just to say, we do not know how much of a problem Martian gravity is. There are still all of the difficulties we do know about.
It will probably be a long time (if ever) before we get a sustained "colony" on Mars, but humans setting foot on Mars is reasonably possible in the relatively near term. If we really wanted to, we could even make a "colony" simmilar to the ISS, where we have a permanantly staffed base, with a crew that stays for "short" (~year) time on Mars, combined with a year or two of total spaceflight.
I'm not remotely convinced this is worth doing. But it seems possible if we really wanted to do it.
...or Mars will be a place where there's only a few people living there for relatively short durations to do scientific research -- like Antarctica.
