[nkurz]

I wasn't aware how far along some of these Chinese satellite networks were. There are several, and the number of satellites planned for them is astonishing. This article seems like a good intro to them, with comparisons to Starlink: https://archive.is/zPsmq

[kikkia]

Do take that article with a grain of salt as it is South China morning post. While in this article they do call out that recently the CCP was ridiculing Elon for taking up too much space, in space. So I can give them some credit on that.

As for the state of these networks, G60/Qianfan had a plan of ~650 sattelites by the end of 2025, but currently sits at 108. They hope for ~1200 by the end of '27

Just before the end of the year the GuoWang constellation hit 136 of their planned 13,000.

For reference starlink has launched over 10k satellites to date with ~9,400 in active service.

Im sure the constellations will grow, but they have been experiencing the pains of scaling, especially with 1 use rockets. SCMP loves to pump up these crazy plans and massive numbers as a national pride win, even when they are not feasible or still really far off.

[jvanderbot]

For reference, we have two internet sat providers based in USA (starlink and kuiper), and both have more than 100-200 satellites that you state for Chinese providers.

If you add in EU providers, depending in how you count then, there's at least 2 or 3 providers who have more than 100 LEO satellites active.