Why Catching Up to Starlink Is a Priority for Beijing

Early in the morning on August 9, a Long March 6A rocket blasted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi. The rocket carried eighteen low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites from the government-backed company Qianfan. State media hailed the launch as China’s answer to Starlink, the U.S.-based satellite internet pioneer, and the first step toward breaking America’s dominance in this market. Qianfan intends to grow its constellation to more than 600 satellites by the end of 2025 and to eventually place 14,000 satellites into orbit.

Qianfan isn’t the only Chinese company with satellite internet ambitions. Several other Chinese outfits are also racing to launch their own megaconstellations—large pools of satellites that work together to deliver broadband internet access. The Guowang project, for example, run by state-owned China Satellite Network Group, has announced plans to create a constellation of 13,000 satellites—although it has yet to send any into space. Overall, China’s leaders hope to launch 40,000 LEO satellites in the coming decade.

China’s push to enter the satellite internet market shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has poured significant resources into closing the gap with America’s space-based technologies, and its efforts are starting to pay off. In June, Chinese scientists oversaw an ambitious effort to land a space probe on the far side of the moon—representing the first successful attempt by any country to place a probe on the moon’s distant corner, a feat fraught with technical complications. China plans to send crewed missions to the moon by 2030 and build a lunar base on the moon’s south pole by 2035. As geopolitical rivalry between the two nations heats up, Beijing is determined to keep pace with America’s satellites.

However, the technology behind LEO systems isn’t easy to master. These systems operate by pinging internet signals back and forth between terminals on the ground and orbiting satellites. Because LEO satellites must travel at high velocities to stay afloat—nearly 17,000 miles per hour, circling the Earth in about ninety minutes—they only have brief contact with the ground transmitters. To keep the internet signal from being interrupted, another satellite must take the place of the original satellite before the first one moves out of sight. Ultimately, a high-performing system requires thousands of satellites operating in synchronicity.

China’s megaconstellation project has a long way to go. Starlink, founded and run by Elon Musk, is the clear market leader. As of July, Starlink had 6,281 satellites in orbit, with hundreds more planned for launch and an eventual goal of 42,000 in space. In a distant second place stands London-based Eutelsat OneWeb, which controls more than 630 LEO satellites. Qianfan’s August launch is a milestone and shows that at least one Chinese company has moved from concept to reality, but in the grand scheme of this market, eighteen orbiting satellites are a drop in the bucket. Qianfan’s new factory can reportedly manufacture up to 300 satellites per year, but this still puts it far behind its Western competitors. Moreover, producing satellites is one challenge, but launching them at scale into space is a whole other matter. Beijing will have to significantly upgrade its rocket launch capacity, including developing low-cost commercial rockets with reusable boosters, for its companies to successfully compete.

Given the steep challenges associated with creating broadband megaconstellations, why is the CCP so committed to this effort? Two reasons stand out: military necessity and geopolitical influence.

The military utility of LEO satellites has become increasingly apparent to China’s leaders. They have seen in the Ukraine war how Starlink technology has provided decisive advantages on the battlefield. Ukraine’s drone fleet relies on satellite-based guidance for targeting, and its troops coordinate field operations via satellite internet. When Starlink outages have occurred—unintentionally or deliberately—the results have been disastrous. For example, Walter Isaacson describes in his biography of Musk a surprise strike planned by Ukraine’s military against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. Ukraine intended to send six seaborne drones “packed with explosives” and use Starlink communications to lead the devices to their targets. As Isaacson writes, “What the Ukrainians did not know was that Musk decided not to enable Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast. When the Ukrainian military learned that Starlink would not allow a successful attack, Musk got frantic calls and texts asking him to turn the coverage on.” But Musk would not relent. Without Starlink’s capabilities, Ukraine was forced to abandon the mission.

Likewise, Chinese military leaders know that in a future war, such as a conflict over Taiwan, having continual internet access on the battlefield to support operations and deployments is critical. They have watched Russian forces struggle in occupied Ukrainian territories without such capabilities. (According to the Wall Street Journal, Moscow has been forced to smuggle in “thousands of Starlink satellite internet terminals” to reduce Ukraine’s advantage.) Therefore, Beijing views a satellite internet system insulated from American control or interference as essential to its military operations.

The CCP also sees geopolitical advantages to developing its satellite industry. Although Starlink has dramatically increased its user base, surpassing 3 million subscribers in May of this year, many areas of the globe still lack Starlink coverage or internet access generally. (The UN estimates that 2.6 billion people worldwide remain unconnected to the internet.) China’s strategy of using technology as an instrument of influence is well established. Its Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative has fostered partnerships in scores of countries to build mobile networks, upgrade digital infrastructure, and provide high-tech surveillance equipment. When it comes to space-based technology, China’s national space agency has already signed 117 space cooperative agreements with thirty-seven countries and four international organizations. Satellite internet also offers a clear market opportunity: The CCP can grow its “sharp power” by exchanging technology for influence, and its firms can derive lucrative profits to boot. As Juliana Suess writes for RUSI, such projects could “lead to a leapfrogging moment, where African countries opt for the Chinese internet constellation over Western providers due to the fact that much of their infrastructure is already Chinese-built.”

The democracy implications from China’s satellite internet push are worrying. China’s products could enhance authoritarian regimes by facilitating digital censorship: In areas dependent on satellite internet, Beijing’s version of Starlink would feature extensive internet controls and content restrictions. Satellite technologies also offer new surveillance capacities that could help governments spy on their domestic opponents and rival states. Already, two Chinese satellite companies—Chang Guang and MinoSpace—reportedly are pursuing partnerships with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to supply them with tiny “cubesat” satellites that can produce high-resolution images “comparable with that of the most sophisticated U.S. and European commercial satellite companies.”

Moreover, if Chinese satellite offerings inundate the global market, they could crowd out options from democratic countries. Even a market heavyweight such as Starlink would be affected. As it stands, China’s LEO ventures enjoy “nearly unrestricted funding, municipal government support, and significant regulatory leeway,” warns a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “By leveraging the country’s SOEs [state owned enterprises] and its existing efforts under the DSR initiative, China could become an extremely robust competitor.”

It is never a good bet to underestimate China’s ability to out-innovate and surpass its rivals. Its companies have proven time and again whether for drones—where Chinese firm DJI has become the dominant consumer drone supplier—or electric vehicles—where manufacturers such as BYD are endeavoring to capture the global market—that no technological lead is safe.

China’s satellite industry is still nascent. It would be quite a leap for its companies to go from launching small batches of LEO satellites to becoming market leaders. Qianfan and its cohorts first need to resolve a host of technical and logistical complications. In the meantime, Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb will continue to grow. But China’s commitment to advancing its space-based technologies should give pause to U.S. policymakers. Undoubtedly, the CCP will expend billions of dollars turbocharging its satellite internet companies. And Beijing will invest with urgency. It is mindful that the window in which to master these innovations for geopolitical advantage and military gain is diminishing.