China’s real space race is not against SpaceX

On 10 July, China reached another important step for its space ambition. For the very first time, it successfully recovered a Long March 10B orbital-class rocket booster by using a sea-based capture system. After the booster separated from the upper stage, it went down in a controlled vertical landing, then was caught successfully by a large net system placed on a special platform at sea. Chinese state media said this was the first successful recovery in the world of an orbital rocket booster using a net capture system on the sea.

In global public discourse, this achievement often looks like another familiar story: China is catching up with the US in space technology. But such an interpretation is actually too narrow. What is happening now is much bigger than that. It is the rise of a new competition over who will control the orbital economy in the 21st century, rather than only a future technology rivalry between the US and China.

Reusability a key stride forward

Over the last ten years, maybe the biggest change in the space launch industry was not about making rockets much bigger or satellites more sophisticated. The real shift actually comes from reusability. When SpaceX managed to land the Falcon 9 booster back in 2015, the company basically changed how the launch business works economically. Because the same booster can fly again several times, the cost for reaching space dropped quite a lot. It was not only giving a commercial benefit but also a very strong strategic edge for the US. 

Today, Falcon 9 launched around 165 missions in 2025 and became the main platform behind growing satellite constellations such as Starlink. Before China finally made a successful Long March 10B test, the US was still the media favourite and remained several steps ahead in global space launch technology.

China seems to understand that lesson very well. Because of that, the success of the Long March 10B should not really be seen only as a single technical achievement. It is also part of a much bigger strategy to build launch capability that is cheaper, faster, and can be sustained in the long run while at the same time showing China’s growing strength in the space technology competition with the US. 

Based on China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the Long March 10B is able to carry around 16 tons of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO) and was designed mainly for launching large satellite constellations. CASC also says it hopes the recovered booster can be reused before the end of this year.

The more important question, however, is why this capability from China has become so strategic. The answer is actually related to how the role of space has been changing in today’s geopolitics. During the 20th century, global power was mostly defined by who controlled the seas (sea power), and because of that, the US, China and Russia competed to dominate their own strategic regions. Then, entering the early 21st century, technological dominance started becoming another key element. And now, the earth’s orbit is slowly turning into another strategic layer, connecting both of those domains together.

Building economies of scale

Satellites are no longer only for communication or scientific observation. Today, they also support military navigation, intelligence collection, global internet access, financial transactions, logistics networks and even autonomous vehicle operation. A country that can launch and keep thousands of satellites in orbit will gain a very important advantage, both economically and in security. In this context, launching satellites at lower cost and doing it repeatedly is becoming a national strategic asset.

This is where the Long March 10B success carries a deeper meaning. China is not only developing a reusable rocket but also putting the basic infrastructure in place for a much bigger expansion of its own orbital assets.

In other words, future competition may no longer be decided by one moon landing only or one Mars mission alone. What seems to matter more is who can manage the biggest satellite network, offer orbital services with lower costs and build a commercial space ecosystem that is much wider than others.

More importantly, lower launch costs could allow China to deploy orbital infrastructure on a far larger scale, something that until now has largely been possible only for the US. In this sense, reusable rockets are doing more than making access to space cheaper; they are lowering the barriers to building a new digital and strategic architecture in orbit.

China confident in its own technology model

China’s success in recovering this rocket booster also says a lot about how its innovation model works. For a long time, the West has often described China as only following behind, basically copying what the US had already achieved. But the net-capture system on the Long March 10B seems to show a somewhat different path.

Instead of replicating Falcon 9’s vertical landing on a drone ship or ground pad using landing legs, China has developed a recovery system that catches returning rockets with nets and hooks mounted on a dedicated recovery vessel. By shifting much of the technical complexity from the rocket to the recovery infrastructure, the design also eliminates the need for landing legs, reducing the rocket’s weight.

It is still too early to tell whether China’s approach will ultimately prove superior to SpaceX’s. Yet Beijing’s decision to pursue a different technological path is itself a sign of the growing maturity of China’s space innovation ecosystem. A competition once centred on imitation and accusations of copying is increasingly becoming a contest between competing technological models.

There may also be another strategic implication, perhaps even more important. If China manages to reduce launch costs in a significant way through reusable rockets, it will gain much stronger capacity to speed up the expansion of its national satellite constellation. During the last few years, Beijing has shown strong ambition to build a LEO satellite internet network that may become an alternative to Western systems such as Starlink. Lower launch costs would only make this process move faster, together with Beijing’s broader ambitions.

In the end, the future of space competition may no longer be defined primarily by exploration or national prestige. Instead, it is increasingly about who controls the communication networks, data flows and digital services that keep the world connected. Space orbit is gradually emerging as another strategic domain of power, alongside land, sea, air and cyberspace.

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