A PIE analysis of China’s commercial space development

Abstract The commercial space industry seems to draw worldwide attention in the recent two decades to respond to the increasingly broad market demand. Compared with Western countries, the development of China’s commercial space industry is still in its infancy and faces many daunting challenges. Few studies have considered the dual perspective of government and market of commercial space industry in China. Aiming at exploring the influencing factors and future directions of the development of China’s commercial space industry, this paper proposed the theoretical analysis framework consisting of Policy, Innovation and Economics, and conducted a synergistic analysis of government and market in China’s commercial space industry. Specifically, based on the interview data, assisted by a machine learning approach, we have conducted an industry analysis of the influencing factors of commercial space in China. The results show that China’s commercial space industry is rapidly developing with many characteristics. Specifically, at present, there is a lack of specific and operational policies at the implementation level. Despite limited disruptive innovation, commercial space companies have achieved breakthroughs in many key areas. The overall industry is exploring more stable and sustainable profit models. The findings of this study contribute to the topic of industry development in business management literature by underpinning the policy discussion, technological analysis and direction for the future development of China’s commercial space industry. The industry practitioners may also benefit from the practices that were discussed in this research