In what may look like an absurdity of communist central planning, China is digging the world's deepest hole.

According to Bloomberg:

Chinese scientists have begun drilling a 10,000-meter (32,808 feet) hole into the Earth's crust, as the world's second largest economy explores new frontiers above and below the planet's surface.

Drilling for what is set to be China's deepest ever borehole began in the country's oil-rich Xinjiang region on Tuesday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Earlier that morning, China sent its first civilian astronaut into space from the Gobi Desert.

The narrow shaft into the ground will penetrate more than 10 continental strata, or layers of rock, according to the report, and reach the cretaceous system in the Earth's crust, which features rock dating back some 145 million years.

It may look like commie-style gigantism, like creating the world's biggest sausage, but it's not.

The hole, which at that depth is very difficult to engineer, will penetrate the superficial layers of the Earth's crust to reach never before breached levels, and for scientists, that can provide information that can be used to determine when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will occur, as well as identify critical mineral and energy resources, according to the report.  The report doesn't say so, but it's known that the prospect of locating "deep oil" is said to be a stunningly important one for China, which not only could be lucrative for the Chinese, but also could yield complete energy independence if it were developed.  Meanwhile, the Chinese are also all about locating rare-earth minerals for the electric cars and other devices they sell to the U.S.  They seem to be sticking to oil themselves, though.

This sounds as though it ought to be another "Sputnik" moment for the U.S.  After all, what the heck are we doing of comparable importance?  I'm no expert, but I haven't found any indication of anything comparable in this field in the U.S. based on a Google search.

That the Chinese are doing this may well be related to this intriguing infographic found on Twitter:

Ranking de los países que más INGENIEROS "producen" durante los 30 últimos años 🌎

📹 CityGlobeTour pic.twitter.com/y3jMl8rXOe

— Curro Lucas (@curro_lucas) May 25, 2023

So while wokester education is turning out grads in wimmin's studies, grievance-group studies, political correctness, phony global warming green environmentalism, and public administration at U.S. universities, the Chinese are turning out engineering graduates who are executing projects such as these, effectively making themselves what America once was, coasting in the recent past but in the last few years now falling behind.

Something like this ought to be telling us we're getting left in the dust technologically.  We've already seen it with Chinese innovations in military technology.

Now, when China digs a hole to America, the symbolic meaning is more disturbing, and more real, than the physical one.

Something's wrong with this picture, and the U.S. ought to be crying out for leadership to restore this critical technological edge.

Image: Pexels, CC0 public domain.