I hope China doesn't land on Mars because of the fragility of the Martian environment, but I see no geopolitical threat in them wasting a lot of money trying.
(Obligatory: Elon Musk did not build a Starship. SpaceX is building it.)
Who would the hardest person at SpaceX to replace be if they left?
Saying it's Shotwell or Musk isn't indefensible. No one is irreplaceable anymore then any one person (as opposed to SpaceX as a whole) is building Starship but it isn't sycophancy to say that some people are more integral to the process.
(Obligatory: Elon Musk did not build a Starship. SpaceX is building it.)