HAIKOU, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- With giant lightning rods towering above the coastline of eastern Wenchang in south China, coconut groves have given way to rows of launch pads while the country's first commercial spaceport is coming to life.
Known as the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site, the spaceport has become a cornerstone of China's endeavors to help Hainan make its emerging commercial space business a strategic growth engine across the island-wide free trade port.
"Launch orders are fully booked for this year and next. The earliest available slot is in the year after," said Zhang Xiaojun, deputy general manager of a Wenchang aerospace launch support company.
The facility's first phase, comprising launch pads 1 and 2, is already operational. Pad 2, equipped with a mobile launch platform and horizontal testing system, can accommodate more than 20 types of domestic rockets and complete preparations for a full launch cycle in as little as 66 hours.
Construction is in full swing on pads 3 and 4, which are expected to be ready by year-end. Once all four pads are online, the site will be capable of supporting approximately 60 launches per year.
But ambition stretches well beyond the launch pads.
Wenchang, the once unknown coastal fishing town, is rushing to build out a vertically integrated ecosystem, ranging from rocket and satellite manufacturing to downstream data services, under a model which officials describe as "Made in Wenchang, Launched from Wenchang."
A rocket assembly, testing and reuse facility, with its first phase having been established in Wenchang by a commercial space company, is operational. A string of other rocket-chain projects have also broken ground.
Additionally, a massive satellite manufacturing base has completed its production line and entered trial production in the city, with the first satellite expected to roll off the line by the end of 2026.
On the data side, progress has also been encouraging. An aerospace supercomputing center, which began operations in 2023, is helping Wenchang stitch together a full aerospace big-data value chain, from data acquisition and reception to storage, processing and commercial application.
Ye Shiyang, chairman of the center's operating company, said the firm has consolidated resources from 161 satellites in orbit to build a sub-meter-resolution commercial remote-sensing database. Leveraging the supercomputing center's processing power and Hainan Free Trade Port's cross-border data-flow policies, the company is expanding its "two ends abroad" data-processing model.
"Overseas clients send us satellite remote-sensing data for processing, and we deliver the finished products back to them," Ye said. In May, the company completed its first remote-sensing data export to Singapore and is in discussions with clients in Thailand, Cambodia and several European countries.
This convergence of rocket, satellite and data chains has drawn more than 700 companies into the satellite and rocket industrial park in Wenchang, creating what officials call a "front shop, back factory" ecosystem: satellites rolled off the production line can reach the launch pad just kilometers away.
At the national level, China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) calls for accelerating the development of strategic emerging industries, including aerospace, and the China National Space Administration unveiled a special action plan in late 2025 to promote the high-quality, safe development of commercial space.
Hainan has moved quickly to align with this push, designating the sector as one of four industrial clusters each targeted to reach 50 billion yuan (about 7.4 billion U.S. dollars) in annual revenue, and positioning it as a key pillar in cultivating new quality productive forces.
"The layout in Wenchang is not just about rocket launches," said Zheng Ni, a division director at the Hainan Provincial Department of Science and Technology.
"The goal is to use the launch site to drive industrial development, building a full-chain cluster and developing rocket, satellite and data chains within an 'aerospace-plus' ecosystem to fuel Hainan's space-powered growth," Zheng said. ■
