China’s web of space ties is rapidly going global—but even as Beijing offers benefits on cost and offerings, experts say the US and Europe still could maintain their diplomatic toehold in emerging space nations. Competing with China, however, requires offering alternatives to their strategies of option lock-in, blended hardware and turnkey solutions.
While some countries may build out their space capabilities by making more use of China, experts don’t see a map of blue-or-red nations, dominated by Western or Chinese space firms. Instead, experts see varying shades of purple, with possible fierce competition in the Global South’s budding markets in key geographic locations.
“Africans don’t choose sides, at least for now…so these countries are typically not locked into one provider,” said Mustapha Iderawumi, a senior analyst at Space in Africa—a Lagos, Nigeria-based market research firm.
Setting the scene: There is a wide spread of nations, across three continents, especially engaged in China’s burgeoning international space network, according to a January report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Pakistan, Egypt, and Venezuela led the pack when the study was published, with 61 other countries claiming at least some space-based relationship with China.
China is using those relationships to prep markets for its emerging commercial space sector, study authors say. Still, all three of the leading countries have openings for US or European competition with Chinese firms.
The pros of China: Chinese companies could gain a unique competitive edge in cost, speed, and training services. Chinese products are often cheaper and come with more perks than Western ones. China provides turnkey product packages with satellite design and construction, launch, testing, financing, insurance, and training built in. When paired with Chinese offers for non-space infrastructure, they can be hard to turn down for some governments. Once Chinese systems are built out, it’s harder for a country to pivot toward Western alternatives.
“The main thing I’ll be looking for is the continuation of these turnkey products, just to track whether that then also makes these countries more likely to partner with Chinese companies in telecom or other semi-related sectors,” said Aidan Powers-Riggs, an associate fellow for China studies at CSIS.
Who is working with China on space?
CSIS evaluated the 60+ countries in China’s space orbit using five metrics: ground infrastructure, satellite design and construction, satellite launch, multilateral agreements, and bilateral agreements. Hard infrastructure projects were weighted above agreements.
The highest-ranking countries are concentrated in:
- Africa: China approached African countries where it was already selling weapons or building bridges, offering to bundle space into the package. African countries were looking for satellite capabilities to monitor agriculture, droughts, and security threats when China came knocking. China offered financing and insurance to sweeten many of those deals.
- Latin America: China has pivoted its space diplomacy toward Latin America in recent years, analysts say, stoking tensions with the United States. Latin America offers China a chance to monitor the United States with geostationary satellites, or to monitor US military satellites in the western hemisphere using ground-based telescopes. So far, these developments haven’t caused public spats with US diplomats, but back-channel conversations could be tense, ventured Powers-Riggs. “Once you make it a public fight, then China feels a lot more need to step in and, sort of like, defend its interests,” he said.
From Great Wall to Open Gates
China is prepping international markets for its commercial space industry, experts say.
Almost all of China’s foreign space projects have run through the state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corporation, a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. But researchers have noticed an uptick in privately led projects in recent years. CSIS researchers point to a ground station in Azerbaijan built in 2021 by private Chinese company Emposat. The station now communicates with a satellite from another private Chinese company, Smart Satellite.
China has explicitly stated that it is seeking a greater international role for its private space companies. The China National Space Administration (CNSA, or China’s space agency) pledged to fold commercial-space projects into China’s international cooperation agenda in November. The agency also announced the formation of a commercial space department, to serve as a regulatory agency for commercial space activities. China was home to 600+ private space-related companies in 2025, according to the CNSA.
“The last year saw a lot more activity from nominally private companies, which gave me this sense that China is willing to let the space industry try Western-style things, as long as it brings their innovative or technological levels up to par with the US,” said Jonathan Roll, a program manager and research analyst at Arizona State University’s ASU NewSpace initiative aiming to form relationships with commercial entities. Roll also was commissioned to write the “Redshift” report examining Chinese space activities, on behalf of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.
China’s industrial policy has a classic component of building up international markets that it is now using for the country’s fledgling private companies, Powers-Riggs said:
“If you look at what’s happened in other industries, like EVs or solar, there’s a process: China’s government targets the industry, all the local governments provide subsidies to companies. Then the companies compete it out within China’s system. And at a certain point, once they reach a level of maturity, the central government guides consolidation and then puts a bunch of resources behind the export. I think we’re in the very early stages of that process, but they’re setting the groundwork to have that export market ready to go once their domestic industry matures.”
What it Means for the West
Option lock-in: Cooperating with China doesn’t prohibit cooperation with Western space partners. But the more a country buys into Chinese systems, the harder it becomes to use Western alternatives in the future.
“It has been vocally expressed by some of these countries that they think they get better deals with the Chinese firms,” Space in Africa’s Iderawumi said.
Blended hardware: ASU NewSpace’s Roll said he expects a more mixed competitive landscape, rather than a mosaic of all-Chinese or all-Western systems, noting that countries are eager to explore the full range of options as they gain space capabilities. For example, while Europe has dominated Africa’s space market so far, some countries in Africa have managed to use both technologies; that is why, for example, Egypt’s Space City in Cairo—which hosts the African Space Agency headquarters—has training programs for both European and Chinese systems. Operating two separate systems isn’t always cost-effective, and some countries may prefer to integrate everything into one system.
Turnkey advantage: That said, China’s signature turnkey systems could help its companies gain market share. The CSIS report points to 5G deployment as an example, where Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE built low-cost telecom infrastructure in developing countries, ultimately establishing China as the world’s largest provider of 5G.
“It’s really about what drives the way the US invests and how its companies operate, which is commercial opportunity and profit. And the fact is, a lot of these Global South countries don’t have a lot of money to spend, and they are not the most profitable markets,” Powers-Riggs said.
“China cares about the commercial aspect, but that’s not the main driver. They know how important the Global South is for a long-term geopolitical play. These are developing economies, and in the future, may be important markets.”
The West, however, still has a chance of being competitive by offering alternatives to China’s web of space ties. With experts saying that the Global South is prepared to take solutions from both China and the West, even those countries already buying into China’s technology could still buy into other options if the offering is right. The Global South, therefore, will be a key market to watch in the coming decade, to see what space offerings they select.
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