China is wary of Starlink, but has other priorities (2025)

In China, Elon Musk is like [the Roman god] Janus: he has two heads. On the one hand, he's an American who opened a mega-car factory in Shanghai in 2019 at the worst moment of the trade war between China and the United States, which cannot be fundamentally bad in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. Especially since neither human rights nor Taiwan's democratic future seem to be of much concern to Mr. Musk. As for the anti-communists, they don't hide their admiration for the libertarian who says out loud what many of them think in silence.

On the other hand, however, he's the founder of Starlink. For a regime that relies in part on the control of information, the myriad satellites launched by a partner company of the US Department of Defense represents a real threat. Acquiring a Starlink terminal is strictly prohibited in China. But there's more: according to a diplomatic letter sent by China to the United Nations, in December 2021, two satellites in the constellation nearly collided with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21.

On each occasion, according to Beijing, the Chinese space station had to take emergency evasive action. These incidents have added fuel to the fire constantly smoldering between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims to have sent several emails to the State Department to complain. The latter denies having received them. The Chinese military-industrial lobby has drawn its conclusions: "A combination of soft and hard measures would be required to render Starlink satellites inoperable and to destroy the constellation's operational system," wrote several researchers in an article published in April in the Modern Defense Technology journal.

'Targeting different markets'

But in a country that has made the conquest of space one of the symbols of its greatness, the response to Starlink can only be destructive. Does China need a comparable constellation? Not necessarily. "State-owned operators have built the best 4G-5G network in the world in China. I just drove to Gansu [in western China] and back. Except for the tunnels, I was able to communicate the whole trip and even had a Zoom meeting for an hour. Starlink is a good back-up to AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States, but in my opinion, an internet satellite network in China should be aimed at different markets, such as aeronautics or shipping," said Tianyi Lan, CEO of Ultimate Blue Nebula, a Beijing-based space consulting firm.

In January, a Beijing-based startup, GalaxySpace, announced the launch of a thousand satellites to provide 5G coverage across the country within three months

You have 47.04% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.