"Mechanical Intelligence’s caught them out, same as the rest of us. Think about it: the X shuttles take six to nine months to get there; a radio signal can upload a body scan in minutes. China got a printer there first, must have hidden it on a supply run. Soon they were adding hundreds of reprints to the population, which meant they won every vote. Mars had been this self-regulating colony, but as the demographics tilted, democracy slipped away. Mars was under UN jurisdiction—being the first multination off-world settlement—so the initial colonists asked them to intervene. The UN ordered China to stop, but they refused, said their scientists formed a nation-state province outside Earth control."