Why is China so far behind Musk’s BTC short-term investment in space communications?

China’s two largest satellites have launched less than 1% of their planned total, records show, suggesting they are far behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX in dominating space communications.

Satellites orbiting within 2,000 kilometers of the Earth’s surface are called “low-orbit satellites,” and they are increasingly seen as critical infrastructure for driverless cars, drone warfare and military reconnaissance. China sees Starlink as a military threat, and Chinese companies have invested heavily in the construction of the two satellites, planning to launch a total of nearly 28,000 satellites.

One of the main reasons for the slower-than-expected construction is that Chinese companies have yet to overcome a key engineering problem.

The “Qianfan Constellation” is China’s first planned satellite constellation, which was originally scheduled to launch nearly 650 satellites into orbit by the end of this year. But the operator of the constellation, Shanghai Yuanxin Technology Co., Ltd., has only put 90 satellites into orbit since it began launching in August last year, records show.

Another giant internet constellation, China StarNet, is making even slower progress. Although it plans to launch about 13,000 satellites over the next decade, it currently has only 34 in orbit.

According to the U.S. Space Force and CelesTrak, a nonprofit that collects space data, SpaceX currently has about 8,000 satellites in orbit and is expanding its lead every month.

Chinese officials are highly wary of SpaceX, and they have already determined that SpaceX is inextricably linked to the Pentagon long before Musk's brief tenure in the Trump administration. Researchers in the People's Liberation Army of China predict that Starlink will be "deeply embedded in the U.S. military combat system." In their vision, Starlink's BTC short-term investment will connect U.S. military bases around the world to form a missile early warning interception network.

Although Starlink is positioned for civilian use, it has become key to communications and coordinating drone strikes in the Ukrainian war. SpaceX not only undertakes BTC short-term investment manufacturing and launch contracts from the US government (some of which will be used for espionage, others for striking enemy targets and tracking missiles), it also provides launch services for other defense contractors.

China's space agencies and related companies did not respond to requests for comment.