China shifts the new space order “toward red”

With the “New Silk Road,” Beijing is “colonizing half the world”: this is the analysis of a report by the U.S. Commercial Space Federation.

BY EMILIO COZZI

On one side there is concern that China may surpass everyone and win the new “race to the Moon.” The Chang’e program, in fact, is moving forward without hesitation, even though the technologies required to land a crew of taikonauts have yet to be tested.
On the other side there is a scenario that cannot be ignored, space-related yes, but far more chthonic and geopolitical.
It is “the Dragon in the room,” to borrow a phrase already used on these pages. At the time it referred to the African context, but the centrality of the Eastern giant is now undeniable in its global influence, particularly in Asia and South America.
China is providing the main driving force behind the reconfiguration of the “new global space order,” as many have defined it, including the most recent report by the Commercial Space Federation, supported by BryceTech and Orbital Gateway Consulting. The most important U.S. trade association has even titled the document Redshift.

The “redshift”

The term, quite fitting, is used in astronomy to describe the effect on the light of very distant objects. According to the law of the expanding Universe formulated by Hubble and Lemaître, the farther away a galaxy is, the greater the speed at which it moves away from us. This results in a “redshift” of the lines in its electromagnetic spectrum. And according to the Commercial Space Federation, what we are witnessing in this “new space order” is precisely a “redshift” along the new Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative.
For this, as for other Chinese expansion initiatives, one might venture to use a troubling term: colonialism. The risk exists, the report suggests, since one of Beijing’s moves consists in providing investments and technologies that create deep ties, if not outright dependence.

The CSF document pieces together this strategy.
The new Silk Road now embraces almost the entire world: practically all of Africa and all of Asia except India, all of Oceania except Australia, South America excluding Brazil and Paraguay, part of Central America, and almost all of Eastern Europe. Left out are Western Europe, with the exception of Portugal, while Italy exited in 2023.

The space Silk Road

In this context there is also a “space Silk Road,” with more than 80 international projects in the fields of satellite manufacturing, ground stations, launch services, data sharing, and training centers. It is being integrated through Chinese state-owned companies and authorized entities, meaning private firms, into the space and communication infrastructure of dozens of countries. Often, and here lies the long lever of control, this comes with the addition of concessional loans and long-term maintenance contracts. “The expansion of Beijing’s influence risks making the countries involved in these projects vulnerable to debt diplomacy, surveillance, censorship of information, and operational intrusion, as has been seen in some cases in South America and Africa,” the report reflects.

China paid six of the eight million dollars needed to build the first Ethiopian satellite, which was then launched in 2019, and Beijing also built a major space facility in Argentina. Its role as a key supporter of developing nations seeking access to space serves its geopolitical interests, even extending to its “selenopolitical” ambitions, as will soon be noted.

The leash of goods and services

According to a study on Chinese space exports by Nathaniel Rome of Georgetown University, from 1990 to June 2023 Beijing launched 77 satellites for foreign clients (about one hundred if collaborations are included) and exported 17 of its own satellites. The trend has accelerated in recent years: since 2007, space exports have not been limited to launch services; China began providing turnkey services that included the launch, the satellite, financing, insurance, the ground segment, training, and operational support, the study notes.
This has allowed it to gain “a strong negotiating position and control over the political and economic choices” of countries in a position of weakness such as Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Laos, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Turkey, and Venezuela. Today China produces many of their satellites, both for communications and for remote sensing, and has also begun to sell data and services.

The colonialism of data

This “space information corridor” (Space Information Corridor, sic!) also involves the export of services such as remote sensing, satellite communications, and navigation applications.
The seamless real-time exchange of data, the pairing of satellite exports with proprietary software and ground systems, is highly functional. “It already widely covers the Eastern Hemisphere, and Beijing is actively promoting both access to its services and the sale of systems to countries that adhere to the Belt and Road Initiative: with remote sensing systems such as Fengyun and Gaofen, which provide weather and agricultural data. Or with the BeiDou navigation system, which now boasts more than 45 satellites, more than Gps, Glonass, or Galileo, and is a cornerstone of China’s presence in many countries, including Algeria, Pakistan, and Cambodia,” says the Csf.

The emerging broadband megaconstellation operator SpaceSail, a company backed by the municipal government of Shanghai, has signed memoranda of understanding with Brazil, Malaysia, and Thailand, and has opened a subsidiary in Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, Ada Space has hosted delegations from the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia to discuss partnerships and the use of the space computing constellation it is contributing to, called “Threebody.”

In addition to selling satellites and data, Chinese engineers provide support to local colleagues and operators. Added to this are the ground stations “exported” to those same countries. The count places two in Algeria, two in Bolivia, one in Ethiopia, three in Indonesia, one in Laos, one in Nigeria, four in Pakistan, two in Venezuela, and one in Minsk, Belarus, about a hundred kilometers from the Lithuanian border, a strategic area at the frontiers of the European Union and a key point in the conflict in Ukraine that could soon expand. These are the towers of Chinese “supervision” in states that are practically new to extra-atmospheric experiences, not to mention that the economic and geopolitical interests of those countries encompass a spectrum much broader than that of space operations.

Tiangong, will it be the new Iss?

Russia, the other space giant, has also strengthened its cooperation with China, in opposition to a “US-led world order” beyond the sky.
Moreover, in the years when the International Space Station is heading toward retirement, Tiangong is set to become the only institutional human outpost in Earth orbit. The West, in fact, will rely on private actors.
True, India and Russia are planning their own stations, but the Chinese one has already begun to attract interest from all over the world. “The absence of a US-led successor would leave the international scientific community little choice but to turn to the Chinese platform,” warns the Csf, which, however, is preparing to take up the baton from the ashes of the ISS along with some of its members.
Tiangong currently hosts or has hosted scientific experiments from numerous US-allied countries, including several European ones such as Italy, Belgium, Germany, Norway, and Esa itself. Memoranda have been cited for the training of European astronauts and possibilities of joint missions aboard the Dragon’s “Heavenly Palace” (Samantha Cristoforetti was studying Chinese precisely for this purpose), but these agreements were signed several years ago and were derailed due to US pressure.

From geopolitics to selenopolitics

The race to the Moon is, as mentioned, an important part of the picture.
The Artemis Accords, a “treaty” that serves as an umbrella for US-led lunar exploration, have gathered 56 signatories. In competition with the Western program, there are instead 13 countries (Venezuela, Belarus, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Egypt, Nicaragua, Thailand, Serbia, Kazakhstan, and Senegal) ready to collaborate on the International Lunar Research Station that Beijing promises to establish on the lunar surface by 2035.
The strategic shift imposed by the new US administration could lead to sharper polarization between the two blocs and to more decisive alignments.
It is worth restating the obvious: in the past decade, China has invested between 85 and 95 billion dollars in space, with about 20 billion in 2024 alone. The United States is around 60 billion in 2025 alone.
This, however, does not seem to reassure the Csf. The United States and its allies know well that China still has many cards to play, both domestically, with a booming public and private space sector, and in deep space exploration, as well as through patient work in diplomacy and international positioning in countries, such as those in Africa, where economic resources are scarce but natural resources abound. These are arenas in which, at least so far, Beijing has always held a winning hand.