‘China follows Musk very closely’: While SpaceX blocked Chinese investors from IPO, China’s space firms prep their own as a counterweight
Ahead of a historic IPO, Space X dominates the global aerospace industry with its reusable rockets and global constellation of internet satellites through Starlink. The anticipation ahead of Friday’s public offering is reaching a fever pitch as the stock market sees mass sell-off of other stocks, and as analysts speculate how many will purchase the company’s anticipated 555.6 million shares. What’s notable about that anticipation is who is doing that speculation in the first place. As the company made headlines for barring investors from Hong Kong and China from partaking—a rare move for a company trying to maximize liquidity—China’s emerging commercial space firms are similarly preparing IPOs that signal the country is competing with SpaceX and Starlink long-term, according to analysts and company filings. “It’s always hard to chalk everything up to a single company 8,000 miles from China, but when you look at Starlink’s progress and the milestones they’ve hit, and then you line that up with China’s announcements and decisions around space and satellite Internet, it’s pretty clear,” Blaine Curcio, the founder of a consulting firm focused on the Chinese space sector, told Fortune. When SpaceX launched its record-breaking 94th batch of Starlink satellites in November, the China National Space Administration released an action plan “opening national scientific research projects to private enterprises” the same month, according to a May report from Beijing-based research firm Equal Ocean. “This is the first time that the China National Space Administration has incorporated commercial aerospace into the overall national space development layout, committing to opening up resources and channels within the system to private enterprises,” the report emphasized. Curcio, a Chinese space industry expert, said that this is because “China follows [Elon] Musk very closely” and that “people in China recognize that what SpaceX has done is by any m