As a major aerospace town in western China, Chengdu has accumulated deep experience in the field of aerospace electronics in its early days, providing key support for core components of satellites. In recent years, Chengdu has rapidly formed a commercial satellite entire industry chain system with the development of entire satellites, satellite payloads, and ground terminals as the core.
Today let’s talk about: China’s top 10 commercial aerospace industry clusters in 2025—Sichuan Chengdu Commercial Satellite Industry Cluster.
1
Chengdu, Sichuan
Chengdu is the capital city of Sichuan Province and the core town of the aerospace industry in western China. As early as the 1950s, the state deployed the 10th, 29th and 30th Institutes of China Electronics Technology here, laying the technical foundation for electronics and communication equipment manufacturing and nurturing a number of backbone enterprises focusing on satellite communications and time and frequency, such as Chuangzhi Lianheng and Tianao Electronics. In 2018, when domestic commercial aerospace entered the fast lane, Nationstar Aerospace landed in Chengdu and took the lead in deploying a low-orbit remote sensing satellite constellation, ushering in a new stage of satellite industry agglomeration. Subsequently, Aurora Star, ViaSat Technology, Huali Intelligent Chip and other companies successively settled in, covering many key links from satellite platform research and development, on-satellite payloads, phased array antenna systems, to remote sensing image processing and data operation, gradually forming a “development-supporting-application” full chain system. On December 16, 2024, Chengdu’s aerospace industry once again received national recognition. In the 2024 list of national advanced manufacturing clusters released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the “Chengde Mianziliang Aerospace Cluster” was successfully selected, establishing an integrated satellite and aerospace industry pattern with Chengdu as the core and driving the coordinated development of surrounding areas.
2
Industrial agglomeration
The agglomeration effect of commercial aerospace enterprises in Chengdu is significant, and an echelon pattern of “chain master + chain subordinate” has been formed. There are 176 commercial aerospace companies in the city, including 25 specialized and new “little giant” companies and 7 listed companies. 7 companies were selected into the 2024 China Top 100 Commercial Aerospace Enterprises list. Chengdu ranks third in the country, second only to Beijing and Shanghai, and has become one of the most potential growth poles of China’s commercial aerospace industry. From the perspective of the satellite industry structure, Chengdu enterprises have formed advantages in the development of low-orbit remote sensing satellites, spaceborne laser communication payloads, navigation enhancement terminals, antenna array design, satellite remote sensing data services and other fields, and the industrial chain is highly coordinated. The whole-satellite enterprise represented by Nationstar Aerospace leads the upstream chip design and antenna development, and then extends to the downstream intelligent interpretation and commercial application of remote sensing images, promoting the formation of a closed-loop ecosystem from “making stars” to “making good use of stars”. At the same time, Chengdu has also successfully applied for a number of national projects such as Beidou application pilot city and low-altitude traffic management reform pilot, which has further promoted the integrated development of satellite navigation, surveying, mapping, remote sensing, low-orbit communications and other fields. In 2024, the scale of Chengdu’s commercial aerospace industry will exceed 20 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%, and it has jumped to the second-tier leading position in the country.
3
Aerospace Industrial Park
At present, Chengdu’s commercial aerospace industry has initially formed a “3+9+N” industrial development spatial pattern centered on Chengdu Future Science and Technology City, Jinniu High-tech Industrial Park, and Qingyang Economic Development Zone. Relying on key areas such as Sichuan Tianfu New District, Chengdu High-tech Zone, Jinniu District, and Qingyang District, a multi-point support and echelon layout of the aerospace industry system have been established.
The following are some representative aerospace industrial parks in Chengdu:
4
technological breakthrough
Chengdu has a long history of technology accumulation in the commercial aerospace field. The high-precision atomic clock developed by Tianao Electronics provides high-precision time support for my country’s Beidou navigation system and has long been a leader in the field of domestic atomic clocks. It has a complete time and frequency product system, with a frequency coverage range of 5MHz~18GHz and a frequency stability of 10⁻⁵~10⁻¹⁴. At the same time, Tianao Electronics is also the only company in China that has the capacity to mass produce chip-level atomic clocks. Nowadays, as commercial aerospace enters a stage of rapid development, the “Star Computing” project led by Chengdu’s commercial aerospace chain owner China Star Aerospace aims to build a future computing network composed of 2,800 computing satellites to help my country take the lead in building a new aerospace information infrastructure in the world. On May 14, 2025, the Long March-2D rocket successfully launched the first batch of 12 computing satellites of NationStar Aerospace’s “Star Computing” program into predetermined orbits, creating the world’s first space computing satellite constellation, marking the official start of the space computing era. The constellation has an on-orbit computing capability of 5POPS and a maximum inter-satellite laser communication rate of 100Gbps. It can provide high-performance, low-latency space edge computing services to users around the world, forming the world’s strongest space computing capability and realizing a technological leap from “computing in days and on the ground” to “computing in days and days”.
5
policy support
In order to accelerate the creation of a high-end aerospace industry cluster with commercial satellites as the core, Chengdu City and Sichuan Province have successively introduced a number of industrial support, talent introduction and fund support policies to continue to optimize the business environment and strengthen full-cycle service guarantees for enterprise development.
6
Industrial collaboration
Chengdu is continuing to strengthen the coordination and linkage between the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. On the one hand, the key links of the entire industrial chain of “rocket manufacturing-satellite development-data application” are built around the main commercial aerospace chain enterprises such as Nationstar Aerospace and Interstellar Glory. On the other hand, through the establishment of Chengdu Satellite Internet and Satellite Application Industry Alliance, Beidou Scale Application Innovation Consortium and other platforms, it promotes in-depth cooperation among enterprises, universities and scientific research institutions in key technology research and achievement transformation. In addition, in terms of regional coordination, Chengdu is developing in conjunction with Meishan, Mianyang, and Xichang to jointly create a commercial aerospace coordinated layout of “Chengdu (complete satellite and complete rocket development)-Meishan (remote sensing constellation construction)-Mianyang (rocket manufacturing)-Western commercial spaceport construction (launch site)”.
7
future development
In the next three years, Chengdu’s commercial satellite industry will enter a stage of accelerated expansion, focusing on promoting the coordinated development of satellites and arrows. As the industrial system increasingly improves and core enterprises continue to develop, Chengdu is expected to rank among the first echelons in the country and become an important growth pole for strategic emerging industries in southwest China. According to the core goals of the “Chengdu Commercial Aerospace Innovation and Development Three-Year Action Plan (2025-2027)”, by 2027, the scale of the city’s commercial aerospace and related industries will strive to exceed 50 billion yuan. The “Chengdu Satellite Internet and Satellite Application Industry Development Plan (2023-2030)” clarifies a clear development “roadmap” in order to build a national leading benchmark city for satellite Internet and satellite applications.
