China challenging U.S. to become next great space power

China’s space program has reached many milestones recently.

In 2025, China conducted more than 90 orbital launches, setting a new national record for orbital launches in a single year. In the past five years, China has 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 have seen many statements by President Xi [Jinping] “They see space and AI as two of the industries that will kind of lead and launch China into becoming a global leader,” said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, a trade association that represents the commercial space industry.

The Commercial Space Federation recently published a publication. report In addition to Arizona State University’s NewSpace initiative, he warned that the United States may soon lose its dominance in space to China.

“Today, the United States is 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 strongest throwing ability on the planet. However, we see that China is trying to catch up very quickly. “If we do nothing, we’ll see them leave us behind in the next five years.”

China’s investments in the commercial space sector, including private and state sources, increased from $340 million in 2015 to about $3.81 billion in 2025, according to data from space research firm Orbital Gateway Consulting.

China has spent more than $104 billion on civil, military and commercial space efforts over the past decade, according to Jonathan Roll, a research analyst at ASU’s NewSpace initiative and co-author of the China space report.

“The first question you’ll probably ask me is what did the United States spend in the same period of time? Our estimates were more than five times as much.” Roll said. “But the real story is that China continues to increase their spending. So they are moving towards their goal of becoming the leader, if not the leader, in space science.”

The space sector in China is supported by a combination of local government, universities, state-owned enterprises and private companies. The result is a robust network of space activity centers distributed throughout the country.

These centers include rocket and satellite production facilities, as well as launch sites and universities.

“The real, real spike – that hockey stick moment – ​​has happened since 2014. In 2014, one of the regulatory bodies in China published a document popularly known as: ‘Document 60.’ What this essentially does is open space and the ecosystem to private investment and then private ownership,” Roll said.

China has doubled its rocket production.

There are more than a dozen private rocket manufacturers in the country, some of which are working on reusable rockets like those produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The country is also making great progress in building its satellite infrastructure.

In 2020, China launched the last satellite needed to complete its own global satellite navigation system called BeiDou, which competes directly with the US GPS constellation. Thousands of internet satellites are also in the works, although the majority have not yet been launched, which would compete directly with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

Space has also become an important part of the country’s Belt and Road initiative.

The Belt and Road Initiative, launched by Xi in 2013, is a massive international infrastructure and economic development program aimed at expanding China’s influence and economic reach.

“For a long time they have built and launched satellites for other countries, but now they have started building ground stations and have even built entire facilities in some countries like Egypt and Pakistan,” Roll said. “But they’ve also wrapped countries in a sort of syn-centric world through the standards, technology and services they get from BeiDou… So it’s soft power. Gray power, as you can say in diplomacy.”

Still, experts say there is much the United States can do to maintain its leadership in space.

These include investing in spaceports, issuing commercial launch licenses and allocating sufficient spectrum for satellite operations.

“This current space race is not about flags and footprints,” Casossa said. “This space race will be the country that establishes the strongest commercial space industrial base.”

Watch the video to learn more.