On the morning of August 19, China’s space industry crossed a major threshold. Shortly after the Chinese aerospace company LandSpace launched a rocket in northwestern China, its booster—the part needed to thrust the rocket into orbit—successfully detached and landed back on earth. It was the first time a Chinese firm recovered a rocket on land, and it came six weeks after the country’s first-ever rocket recovery, carried out in the South China Sea by China’s premier state-owned space contractor. These events mark the dawn of China’s reusable rocket launch—a capability that will unlock enormous potential in the country’s booming space industry.

Washington’s response to these developments has been muted. The United States still conducts more than twice as many launches and has more satellites in orbit than any other country. But China is catching up. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of rockets launched annually by Chinese companies more than doubled, from 39 to 92. Chinese entities have applied for licenses for hundreds of thousands of communications satellites, and Chinese space companies are proliferating. Many of them, such as LandSpace, are relatively new but already innovative.

This progress has both economic and military implications. Chinese companies could soon compete with U.S. firms to provide vast swaths of the globe with space-based services such as satellite Internet. Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), which sees space superiority as essential to winning future wars, is developing a range of space capabilities as well as a suite of weapons that can attack satellites. This poses a serious risk to the U.S. military, which depends on space for communications, situational awareness, and navigation, as well as for conducting precision strikes and receiving missile warnings.

China’s development as a space power should be a wake-up call for the United States. After the end of the Cold War, Washington began to take its dominance in space for granted. It can no longer afford to do so. As Beijing’s space industry advances, its cost advantages will make it much harder for U.S. companies to compete, and China’s military capabilities will increase the risk that space becomes a battlefield in future conflicts. The era of unassailable U.S. space power is ending, and Washington has no choice but to adapt.

China’s space program dates to the 1950s, when Chinese leader Mao Zedong initiated efforts to modernize the PLA and boost technological innovation. In 1970, China launched its first satellite, and in the 1980s, it made space technology research a national priority. But the watershed moment for China’s space program occurred during the 1990–91 Gulf War, when the U.S. military’s adept use of space-based assets allowed a relatively small but technologically advanced coalition to defeat Iraq’s army in just a few days. Satellites allowed U.S. forces to navigate difficult desert terrain, gave commanders information about the battlefield with greater speed and accuracy, and enabled soldiers to coordinate seamlessly across long distances. Beijing, which had not realized just how far behind it was, leaped into action to catch up.

In the years that followed, PLA doctrine emphasized the growing importance of advanced technology, especially satellites, for warfighting. In 2000, the Chinese military began developing its own satellite-powered navigation service, called BeiDou, so that it would not have to rely on U.S.-operated GPS. In 2015, the PLA created the Strategic Support Force, a now defunct organization that consolidated China’s space, cyber, and electronic warfare........

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