The Next Frontier of Influence: China’s bid to Shape the Global Order from Space

A Chinese rocket on display at the Henan Museum in Zhengzhou. Image by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D., Public domain (CC0 1.0).

By Samuel Dumesh, July 14, 2025

Global connectivity increasingly relies on space infrastructure, paving the way for the world to progress further into the final frontier. In this competition, control of space infrastructure is inextricable from geopolitical influence. Recognizing an opportunity, China has moved swiftly, offering developing nations space infrastructure and embedding its long-term interests. For the United States, security strategy in space tends to focus on direct military threats, anti-satellite technology, or missile attacks—not countering foreign infrastructure projects. This approach cedes, rather than competes with China.

Why China Pursues Space Contracts

China’s aggressive expansion of space infrastructure into the Global South aligns directly with Beijing’s broader geopolitical ambitions. By positioning itself as a key provider of space technology, China can embed strategic capabilities within civilian aid packages, creating long-term leverage, intelligence advantages, and market dependencies. This approach, cloaked in the language of development and cooperation, extends China’s groundwork for its ambitions. In particular, China gains:

1. Long-Term Strategic & Economic Leverage: China converts “development aid” into lasting geopolitical leverage by embedding itself deeply into partner nations’ critical space infrastructure. This approach enables Beijing to shape host-country decisions on data governance, spectrum usage, and foreign-policy alignments. Leveraging state-subsidized loans to offer price points unavailable to Western firms, China consistently underbids competitors. This lets it position itself as a lender, contractor, and permanent stakeholder, locking nations into an often decades-long Chinese presence. Those bundled contracts cover launches, hardware, software, and financing, creating deep technical dependencies making later shifts away from Chinese systems economically and operationally prohibitive.
2. Authority Over Data Governance & Technical Standards: China reshapes host-country expectations around secrecy and data governance through contractual clauses limiting inspection rights and public disclosure. These practices undermine the transparency and oversight promoted by Western-led initiatives like the Artemis Accords. Simultaneously, proprietary protocols, mandated vendor selection, and long-term servicing contracts are set to Chinese technical standards, constraining interoperability with Western systems and deliberately positioning China as the rule-setter for how space infrastructure is managed and secured. These provisions, combined with China’s expansive data governance laws, mean sensitive information can be accessed by Chinese firms and ultimately provided to Chinese authorities, raising ongoing espionage concerns. Together, these practices not only facilitate potential data exploitation but also advance China’s agenda-setting power, gradually shifting partner countries away from Western norms of transparency and secure data sharing.
3. Integrated Military-Civil Fusion Abroad: China’s vertically integrated model, administered through China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC), and PLA-linked launch sites, ensures centralized authority over sensitive TT&C infrastructure. Projects presented as civilian are deliberately designed to PLA military specifications, embedding dual-use functionality from inception. Personnel rotations and integrated operations blur distinctions between commercial and military assets, ensuring seamless PLA access without renegotiating civilian contracts. Chinese-built infrastructure provides Beijing with communications and data flow through backdoors, network routing, and on-site PLA personnel, continuously strengthening the PLA’s global intelligence network.
4. Rapid Activation Capability: Chinese overseas ground stations and satellites can rapidly transition from civilian roles to military operations on command, extending China’s military capabilities globally. This capability became more streamlined following the 2024 restructuring that placed the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General (CLTC), the organization typically responsible for long-term technical support, directly under the CMC and Xi Jinping. Presenting these projects under civilian and development banners provides China with plausible deniability, minimizing resistance internationally and complicating sanctions efforts against these dual-use assets. CLTC now works with the PLAAF to launch satellites, manage ground‐station networks, or activate electronic countermeasures when needed, meaning the same organization responsible for long-term technical support is also responsible for securing space dominance.
5. Future Tech Advantages: China’s success in these approaches for other space infrastructure has led to a reinforcement and replication of this approach in emerging technologies. China aims to dominate low Earth orbit (LEO) through mega-constellations of satellites and thus crowd out U.S. satellite initiatives. Similarly, China is deploying overseas Beidou navigation centers to supplant GPS, enhancing Chinese control over essential navigation and timing services. These approaches are heavily backed by SoEs and aggressively target the same developing markets as Starlink but move faster as they are integrated into bundled space infrastructure offers that undercut U.S. firms.

Why This Matters to the U.S.

China’s expansion of dual-use space infrastructure creates distinct and multifaceted threats to the United States, going beyond Beijing’s strategic gains to directly undermine U.S. interests. Washington faces heightened risks from:

1. Interoperability Risk: China’s role in designing, launching, and maintaining foreign space infrastructure undermines the United States’ ability to operate with partners. While Chinese systems often provide the only feasible entry point for emerging space programs, this early dependency shapes the country’s long-term options. The inability to interoperate with U.S. or partners can limit future participation in joint initiatives, reducing the U.S.’ ability to build coalitions and advance shared interests. As space infrastructure expands, it quickly becomes critical for areas such as communications, logistics, and cybersecurity, meaning U.S. agencies and companies will have to engage with these systems during joint operations or civilian coordination. By embedding proprietary hardware and opaque protocols in networks, Beijing introduces systems that are technically incompatible with or pose intrinsic vulnerabilities to U.S. architectures. These dependencies can impede real-time military coordination, slow crisis-response mechanisms, and complicate the exchange of intelligence. Moreover, China’s control over launches, ground, and standards creates points of failure in partners’ supply chains. Washington’s reaction has been confined mainly to warnings and selective diplomacy.
2. Exploitation of Data for Economic Espionage: Persistent Chinese access to global communications infrastructure allows Beijing to capture economically sensitive data flows. Chinese-built space infrastructure in developing nations serves as a critical vector for this persistent access, embedding collection points deep within partner countries’ networks. This data collection directly threatens the competitive advantage of U.S. firms and intellectual property security, weakening America’s global technological leadership.
3. Impairment of U.S. Diplomatic Influence: China’s embedded infrastructure reduces diplomatic leverage by locking nations into long-term alignment with Beijing. Chinese ground stations, TT&C facilities, and bundled satellite-service contracts help to create enduring space-sector lock-in across developing regions. These strategic dependencies hinder U.S. diplomatic and economic initiatives in developing regions, international organizations, and standard-setting bodies (such as the International Telecommunication Union or United Nations) as China seeks to redefine global standards and norms. This results in the weakening of American international influence and potentially undermines future diplomatic efforts.
4. Reduced Operational Security in U.S.-Supported Missions: Nations reliant on Chinese-built infrastructure present compromised operational security in U.S.-funded military or humanitarian missions. Dependence on Chinese satellites or ground stations creates additional Chinese capacity to expose U.S. operational movements, locations, or intentions, directly impacting mission effectiveness and personnel safety.
5. Dual-Use Activation Threat (Cyber, Kinetic, and DoS): Chinese-built satellites and ground stations can shift instantly from benign civil services to offensive tools, enabling cyberattacks or direct tasking of kinetic weapons against U.S. assets. Because the same infrastructure and CLTC attachés handle maintenance and TT&C, Beijing can throttle communications, insert malware, or cue PLA counter space systems with minimal warning. Mixed or spoofed signals jeopardize coalition precision-strike coordination and civil aviation safety, eroding a long-standing U.S. technological advantage. While capability is specialized, NATO and U.S. authorities have long warned about the risks of signal spoofing and jamming, as demonstrated by Russia. Although there are no public reports of China using these methods, the design of Chinese-built infrastructure and Beijing’s focus on dual-use capabilities make this a credible and growing concern. Previous research found that the PLA Strategic Support Force (PLASSF) was tasked with developing and potentially conducting satellite signal spoofing and cyber operations as part of its counterspace mission; these missions and capabilities have since been assumed by the CLTC.
6. Tech Leadership: The global roll-out of packaged Chinese alternatives with this infrastructure, such as Beidou, creates a considerable impetus to adopt more Chinese technologies. It can lead to a two-tier navigation environment where countries could be forced between GPS and Beidou signals in contested areas. As governments increasingly adopt Chinese technical standards and architectures, the U.S. loses influence in defining norms, innovation directions, and global commercial interoperability.
7. Debris Cascade Risk: China’s space infrastructure deals and planned mega-constellations, launched at a break-neck pace under lax transparency, heighten the probability of collisions. These collisions could litter low-Earth orbit with debris, threatening U.S. military and commercial satellites.

Case Studies

The following three case studies explore the ways in which China has leveraged its space capability to influence countries and regions in the global south.

Beijing’s Footprint in Bolivian Space

China’s Espacio Lejano: Argentina’s Deep Space Station Dilemma

From Oil to Orbit: China’s Leverage in Nigeria’s Space Program

Acronym Guide