China is about to try a high-stakes landing on Mars

[AntennaGuy]

...Hmmm, it's hard to say how much of that might be due to the Chinese adopting essentially the same engineering solution to getting down to the Martian surface.

I agree. But it is also hard to say that all of it can be explained in that manner. My opinion is that their animation/public-relations team simply took a short cut. And that's now been exposed. Whether exposing it matters, at all, remains to be seen.