China’s space program has hit a number of milestones lately.
In 2025, China executed over 90 orbital launches, setting a new national record for orbital launches in a single year. In the last five years, China returned the first samples from the far side of the Moon, completed its own low-earth orbit space station and landed a rover on the surface of Mars.
“We’ve seen multiple statements from President Xi [Jinping] and what he calls China’s space dream,” said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, a trade association that represents the commercial space industry. “They see space and AI as two of those, sort of, industries that are going to help lead and catapult China to become a global leader.”
The Commercial Space Federation recently published a report alongside Arizona State University’s NewSpace initiative warning that the U.S. could soon lose its dominance in space to China.
“The United States today is still by far the global leader when it comes to space,” Cavossa told CNBC. “You know, we still have the strongest commercial space industry. We still have the strongest launch capability on the planet. But what we see is China is moving very quickly to catch up. And if we do nothing, we see them surpassing us here in the next five years.”
Chinese investment in its commercial space sector, including from private and government sources, increased from $340 million in 2015 to about $3.81 billion in 2025 according to data from space research firm Orbital Gateway Consulting.
Over the last decade, China has spent over $104 billion on civil, military and commercial space efforts, according to Jonathan Roll, a research analyst at ASU’s NewSpace initiative and co-author of the China space report.
“The immediate question you’ll probably ask me is what did the U.S. spend in the equivalent amount of time? The estimates that we had was over five times more.” Roll said. “But the real narrative is that China keeps increasing its expenditures. So they’re they’re progressing towards their goal of being a leader, if not the leader in space science.”
In China, the space sector is supported by a combination of local government, universities, state-owned enterprises and private companies. The result is a robust network of space activity hubs dispersed throughout the country.
These hubs house rocket and satellite manufacturing facilities, as well as launch sites and universities.
“The real, real uptick — that hockey stick moment — has been since 2014. In 2014, one of the regulatory entities in China put out a document which is colloquially known as ‘Document 60.’ And what that essentially does is it opens the space domain and ecosystem to private investment, but then also private ownership,” Roll said.
China has doubled down on building rockets.
The country has more than a dozen private rocket manufacturers, some of which are working on reusable rockets like those made by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX.
The country is also making great strides in building out its satellite infrastructure.
In 2020, China launched the last satellite needed to complete its own global satellite navigation system called BeiDou, which directly competes with the U.S. GPS constellation. Also in the works are thousands of internet satellites, though the majority have yet to be launched, that will directly compete with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
Space also has become a major part of the country’s Belt and Road initiative.
Launched in 2013 by Xi, the Belt and Road Initiative is a massive international infrastructure and economic development program meant to expand Chinese influence and economic reach.
“They’ve long built satellites for other countries and launched them, but now they’ve started building out ground stations and even in some countries like Egypt and Pakistan, they’ve built out whole facilities,” Roll said. “But then they’ve also sort of enveloped countries into the sinocentric world through standards, technology, services that they’re getting from BeiDou …. So it’s soft power. It’s gray power, as you could say in diplomacy.”
Still, experts say that there are a number of things the U.S. can do to maintain its leadership in space.
These include investing in space ports, streamlining commercial launch licensing and allocating sufficient spectrum for satellite operations.
“This current space race is not about flags and footprints,” Casossa said. “This space race is going to be the country that builds the strongest commercial space industrial base.”
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