Elon Musk’s mission to Mars talk, coupled with regular SpaceX launches, have helped turn the space market into a private one, rather than one wholly owned by the government. China operates in both realms here – from large government missions to private satellites and new endeavors designed for future commercial use, from low orbital delivery systems to stronger engines for aerospace.
In August, CPA and the Prague Security Studies Institute released a joint report, Ground Game of Authoritarian Space Powers, which examined how China is going after this new space industries market – not only for big government projects like Moon landings, but also in the private sector. China’s state-owned companies are pursuing a program of “space sector capture” to penetrate and control the space sectors in numerous countries. The report details how many of these companies’ offers are backed by the Chinese government to bundle satellites, launch services, ground stations, positioning, navigation and timing services, training, as well as subsidized financing from China to create long-term relationships with Chinese space companies.
Global data for 2024 shows strong private sector activity in space, with more limited and still emerging figures for 2025 so far. The most robust, quantifiable numbers available today come from industry reports that track commercial space revenue and startup financing, primarily.
The rapid growth of the space economy is driven in part by advancements in propulsion systems, satellite miniaturization, and declining launch costs. Reusable launch technology — led by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the Lockheed Martin/Boeing joint venture called United Launch Alliance (ULA) — has accelerated the expansion of the commercial space sector. China is watching, and following closely along.
New rocket innovations, namely reusable ones, have significantly lowered costs and increased access to orbit, enabling greater private-sector participation and investment.
SpaceX’s reusable rockets have made spaceflight more affordable, allowing for more frequent missions. Blue Origin’s New Glenn – which successfully landed its booster during a launch of two NASA Escapade satellites deployed towards Mars in November, the second company to do so following SpaceX – and New Shepard vehicles are broadening human and cargo access to space. Meanwhile, ULA, with its Vulcan Centaur rocket, is playing a critical role in launching national security payloads for the government, along with their commercial satellite offerings and support for deep-space exploration missions.
Launch activity has surged, and the U.S. leads China by a lot. Before 2012, annual space launches never exceeded 170 objects. But since 2019, each year has set a record. In 2023, 2,664 objects were launched into space, a record, of which 2,166 of them were launched from the U.S.
“China cannot conduct space launch and build satellites as fast as the U.S. but they are gaining and just tested a re-launchable rocket in the last 24 hours,” said Clayton Swope, Deputy Director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. [Testimony]
“China has already built three space stations and conducted three robotic space missions. Today, China has mostly copied our playbook in space, but they are also doing things that no one else has ever done, including satellite refueling in geosynchronous orbit this year,” Swope said, adding that it was a pioneering effort.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA-18), ranking member of the full House Committee on Science, Space & Technology said Washington is trying to assess Beijing’s strategic objectives in space. “It is also critical that we support a strong space program. We have to keep pushing the boundaries of space technology and development,” she said.
China’s Beating America to the Moon. Witnesses Tell House Space Committee Needs More Government Action.
China is beating the U.S. to the Moon, namely the dark side of the Moon we never see from Earth. It’s colder there. And darker. And China has the energy technologies they’ve invented themselves to make machines work there. We do not. So the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology’s Subcommittee on Space asked four witnesses what the space industry needed to do to maintain its lead in the space race, if we are already losing that race to the Moon.
“We cannot control what China is doing, we can only control what we do,” said Michael Griffin, President of LogiQ Inc. [Testimony] He was one of four panelists during the Dec. 4 Subcommittee hearing titled “Strategic Trajectories: Assessing China’s Space Rise and the Risks to U.S. Leadership.”
Griffin said that despite the Artemis project and nearly $10 billion added to NASA’s budget in H.R. 1, aka the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ NASA has no plans to return to the Moon anytime soon. “I think the true risk is not in failing to go back to the Moon before China, but it is in failing to commit to what winning the space race means,” he said. “We have no sustained commitment, but China does.” Griffin was the more bearish of the four witnesses.
Usually, hearings revolving around China competition get the national security framing. China is gaining. It’s a danger. The U.S. government must act now. This works to light fires under Congress to appropriate more money to any given program or initiative and NASA got that, despite Democrats on the panel all arguing to the contrary.
This extra money from H.R. 1 — around $9.9 billion — is intended to support key programs like Artemis, the Space Launch System, and Orion over the coming years, ensuring funding through 2032. This news was well received by space industry publications, and is part of what witnesses said was missing – “a government signal” to manufacture goods needed to achieve the goals of those three programs. Yet, those programs are there. The bell has been rung. The U.S. space industry is in the pole position, even as China seeks to create alternative systems in commercial space. This should worry everyone. For starters, in a war scenario, China could scramble or destroy U.S.-backed GPS satellite systems and have enough of their own systems in place to make up for it. In a totally benign environment, China’s official government’s push for space industries ultimately means the commodification of space machinery. Think rocket launchers, and satellite internet, for example. China can then offer those items to the world, beating the U.S. on price just as they do with any other manufactured good. This is really the crux of the problem, rather than who gets to Mars first. The U.S. has had rovers on Mars since July 1997.
Dean Cheng, Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said one of the most important things for the CCP about space is learning systems integration – how manufactured electronics and equipment, usually made for totally different industries, are merged together and interact as one unit. He said they are learning this across communications systems that were once used commercially, now integrating them into satellites.
“That is vital because space is vital for establishing information dominance whereas information is a key currency for military and economic power,” Cheng said. “They have a walled off system. Foreign players are not invited and not involved in their supply chain. And as they scale up and innovate, they go off and compete globally against U.S. companies in other markets.”
The U.S. space industry, like China’s to some extent, is also walled off. Trade policies made it impossible for the U.S. to import rocket engines for example. But the U.S. tends to team up with other countries, like those in Europe, as opposed to China.
Subcommittee Chairman Mike Haridopolos (R-FL-8), who represents Florida’s Space Coast, said in his opening statement that the competition between the U.S. and China “will define the space domain of the future.” He said it will compete with U.S. companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX in commercial space, including satellite launchers and other low orbital technologies and spacecraft.
Haridopolos joined Democrats in asking what the U.S. should copy from China’s space program.
Planning and commitment were key. Also, the fact that bureaucrats and successive governments – which do not exist in Beijing – cannot derail industrial policy objectives through executive order.
“Once China sets a target, such as boots on the Moon, that goal is then translated to programmatic imperatives across the bureaucracy. So when Xi Jinping and his staff say it will happen, you will be hard pressed to stop it,” Cheng said. “If it is in their Five-Year Plan, it has full bureaucratic approval. Everyone is going to go along with it and the staffing will be stable for at least those five years, without risk of funding cuts.”
Griffin reiterated a popular sentiment among many Republicans on Capitol Hill – and that is not to compete with China by becoming a Western version of China.
“I don’t want to surpass China by behaving like China,” he said. “I want us to rely on our free market principles that encourage and award successful innovators. The role of the government is to create a demand signal and when you create that demand signal, you will have the innovation to come and you will have industry invested to meet that goal,” he said.
Space: A New Frontier, Again
Elon Musk’s mission to Mars talk, coupled with regular SpaceX launches, have helped turn the space market into a private one, rather than one wholly owned by the government. China operates in both realms here – from large government missions to private satellites and new endeavors designed for future commercial use, from low orbital delivery systems to stronger engines for aerospace.
In August, CPA and the Prague Security Studies Institute released a joint report, Ground Game of Authoritarian Space Powers, which examined how China is going after this new space industries market – not only for big government projects like Moon landings, but also in the private sector. China’s state-owned companies are pursuing a program of “space sector capture” to penetrate and control the space sectors in numerous countries. The report details how many of these companies’ offers are backed by the Chinese government to bundle satellites, launch services, ground stations, positioning, navigation and timing services, training, as well as subsidized financing from China to create long-term relationships with Chinese space companies.
Global data for 2024 shows strong private sector activity in space, with more limited and still emerging figures for 2025 so far. The most robust, quantifiable numbers available today come from industry reports that track commercial space revenue and startup financing, primarily.
The rapid growth of the space economy is driven in part by advancements in propulsion systems, satellite miniaturization, and declining launch costs. Reusable launch technology — led by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the Lockheed Martin/Boeing joint venture called United Launch Alliance (ULA) — has accelerated the expansion of the commercial space sector. China is watching, and following closely along.
New rocket innovations, namely reusable ones, have significantly lowered costs and increased access to orbit, enabling greater private-sector participation and investment.
SpaceX’s reusable rockets have made spaceflight more affordable, allowing for more frequent missions. Blue Origin’s New Glenn – which successfully landed its booster during a launch of two NASA Escapade satellites deployed towards Mars in November, the second company to do so following SpaceX – and New Shepard vehicles are broadening human and cargo access to space. Meanwhile, ULA, with its Vulcan Centaur rocket, is playing a critical role in launching national security payloads for the government, along with their commercial satellite offerings and support for deep-space exploration missions.
Launch activity has surged, and the U.S. leads China by a lot. Before 2012, annual space launches never exceeded 170 objects. But since 2019, each year has set a record. In 2023, 2,664 objects were launched into space, a record, of which 2,166 of them were launched from the U.S.
“China cannot conduct space launch and build satellites as fast as the U.S. but they are gaining and just tested a re-launchable rocket in the last 24 hours,” said Clayton Swope, Deputy Director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. [Testimony]
“China has already built three space stations and conducted three robotic space missions. Today, China has mostly copied our playbook in space, but they are also doing things that no one else has ever done, including satellite refueling in geosynchronous orbit this year,” Swope said, adding that it was a pioneering effort.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA-18), ranking member of the full House Committee on Science, Space & Technology said Washington is trying to assess Beijing’s strategic objectives in space. “It is also critical that we support a strong space program. We have to keep pushing the boundaries of space technology and development,” she said.
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