
China’s Effort to Build a Competitor to Elon Musk's Starlink Is Off to a Bumpy Start
Zeyi Yang
created: May 20, 2025, 9 a.m. | updated: May 22, 2025, 5:02 p.m.
If you gaze up at the night sky, there's a good chance you’ll spot a trail of fast-moving, bright dots—newly launched Starlink satellites.
But you might soon also see something else: spacecraft from Chinese projects building their own Starlink-like low Earth orbit satellite internet networks.
The two Chinese projects are officially called Guowang and Qianfan, but they each have a confusing set of alternative names in English due to their corporate structures and language differences.
Faulty SatellitesAs of last month, Qianfan has launched 90 satellites that will provide broadband internet service for ground users, while Guowang has launched 29.
Unlike Starlink, which publishes GPS information of its satellites in orbit, the Chinese companies have disclosed little about how their satellites are doing.
2 weeks, 4 days ago: WIRED