alt Hacker NewsChina's constellations are roughly where Starlink was in early 2020, except that their launch costs remain much higher. Yes, they move fast, but SpaceX is one of the few US companies I'd bet on to compete with them.
Also, I wonder how receptive the world will be to Chinese ISPs given their history of internet censorship at home.
SpaceX is ultimately still an American company operating at American scale vs PRC. Last year spaceX had fleet of 18 F9s doing more than 50% of global launches, 80% including starlink. SpaceX stans fixate over 50% and 80%, but ignore that 18 rocket cores is rookie numbers. 7/145 US space launches in 2024 was Non SpaceX. That means US in aggregate build ~25 rockets (i think less since some SpaceX are older cores). Versus PRC 68, about ~80 tyhis year (missing keep missing goal of 100). So we can already see there's a 4-5x difference in total launch vehicles production. When/if PRC sorts out reusables, they get both cadence x volume, and no telling how far they can extend the gap, if anything like auto, fast enough that they can overtake SpaceX in historic payload within a few years. Assuming payload enough demand, which I doubt... outside space weaponization arms race.
I think the world, well mainly govs, many of whom who are already running Huawei network gear would appreciate PRC willingness to accomodate local filtering (censorship) rules with how world is trending towards cyber soveignty.
That said, I can see SpaceX being elevated to Boeing tier strategic asset to compete, assuming Musk badblood doesn't interfere.