The Race, Measured at the Same Age
Today's Absolute Picture
The age-aligned chart above is the fair comparison; this is the raw scoreboard. Combined, China's two broadband constellations hold 424 satellites against Starlink's 9,809 — with a combined licence book above 27,000.
How we count: Qianfan and Guowang figures are satellites currently on orbit in our tracking data (including spacecraft still raising to operational altitude, excluding anything decayed); the Starlink figure is the operational fleet — the same unified bases used on every Orbital Radar page (the trackers, the Guowang & Qianfan guide and the China hub all draw from one shared count), which is why our numbers can differ slightly from operator announcements or sites that count on other bases.
Where the Current Pace Leads
⏱ Projection — at the trailing 90-day pace
Methodology: linear extrapolation of the trailing 90 days of catalogued deployments, recomputed daily — deliberately simple and stated openly. It assumes no launch failures, no further stand-downs and no cadence change; history moves the true date in both directions. This is a pace indicator, not a forecast.
Why the Gap?
The pace gap is real, but the trajectory matters more than the snapshot: since launches resumed in April 2026, Qianfan's cadence has sharpened markedly, Guowang is deploying in parallel, and China's Long March production line is scaling. Orbital Radar currently tracks 238 Qianfan and 186 Guowang satellites against 9,809 operational Starlink spacecraft — every one of them visible on our Qianfan, Guowang and Starlink trackers.
The full programme background — operators, orbits, spectrum and export strategy — is in our Guowang & Qianfan guide, and the whole national picture, from Tiangong to the launch record, lives on the China in Space hub.
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