The new space race: how China plans to break SpaceX’s launch monopoly with IPO push

To challenge the global launch market dominance of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Beijing is adopting a coordinated, multi-company “wolf-pack” strategy fuelled by recent engineering breakthroughs in reusable rocketry. The milestones come as a wave of aerospace firms push to secure the capital needed to scale operations and capture global market share.

According to exchange filings in Shanghai and Hong Kong, at least 15 commercial aerospace companies were now in the pipeline to go public. Among the applicants for IPOs, CAS Space and Beijing Minospace Technology had both advanced to the inquiry stage on the Nasdaq-style Star Market in Shanghai, officially known as the Sci-Tech Innovation Board and a primary fundraising platform to finance the nation’s space ambitions.

Meanwhile, LandSpace Technology – widely regarded as a challenger to SpaceX – had its initial public offering review status restored to “Inquired” in late June after submitting updated financial materials. It was suspended in late March because of expired financial data, while the company now seeks to raise 7.5 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion)

At the end of June, LandSpace officially announced that its Zhuque-3 reusable test rocket had completed a static fire test, where the engine’s performance is tested at full power without launching. Both LandSpace and CAS Space plan to channel their IPO proceeds directly into reusable rocket projects.

These developments come amid a major technical breakthrough in the domestic sector. On July 10, China successfully recovered the Long March-10B carrier rocket – developed by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) – at sea via a recovery platform.

The achievement marked the country’s first successful controlled recovery of a rocket’s first stage – the bottom section of the vehicle that contains the engine – and the world’s first-ever “net-based” recovery. Unlike industry giant SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which autonomously lands on a ground pad or drone ship, the Long March-10B used an interception net deployed on a floating platform to catch the booster.