Half a century ago, China launched its first satellite, the very first object to be sent into space by the Communist party-ruled country. Now, satellites have become a central part in China's ambitious globe-spanning infrastructure push.
The Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), a pet project of China's leader Xi Jinping, aims to build trillions of dollars of infrastructure from Asia to Africa to Europe, and along sea routes too. Involving roughly 70 countries so far, it entails massive spending (and lending) by China on railroads, ports and energy projects, highways—and, increasingly, satellite launches.
China has been exporting satellites for over a decade, but it's become easier to think of them as “infrastructure” in recent years as capabilities increased without costs going up, according to Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, a Hong Kong-based satellite market research firm. Apart from providing critical time-keeping and weather forecasts, satellite internet service has become much more viable.
“A single satellite before might have been able to connect, for example, tens of thousands of broadband subscribers, it is now in the high hundreds of thousands or single-digit millions,” Curcio told Quartz. China could soon be trying to sell a satellite as part of a package deal to address a specific problem, for example, throwing in related equipment and services to help bring 50,000 schools online within a period of time, he said.
Unlike other infrastructure projects, though, this extra-terrestrial side of BRI advertises China's growing high-tech prowess. Yet the country's increasing influence in the use of space technology globally could also become a security concern for countries like the US.
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