Staking out its position in the "space economy", the country's largest economic city has taken action.

On October 27, at the 2026 Satellite Internet Industry Ecosystem Conference, Shanghai launched the preparation for the establishment of a satellite internet industry fund. Jointly initiated by the municipal and district-level investment platforms in Shanghai and social capital, the fund will give play to the leveraging role of state-owned capital, empower technological innovation and foster a sound industrial ecosystem.

Previously, six departments including the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization issued the "Action Plan for Innovative Development of the Satellite Internet Industry in Shanghai (2027-2030)". It points out that the core direction of "strengthening technology, consolidating foundations, optimizing clusters and expanding applications" will be focused on to systematically optimize the technological research and development and industrial layout of satellite internet. By 2030, core technologies will be independent and controllable, with more than 100 scientific research achievements transformed; the satellite-ground network will achieve efficient coordination, with a total of more than 3,000 satellites in orbit; the industrial cluster will be optimized and improved, with more than 100 high-quality enterprises and other market entities cultivated; innovative applications will be deeply integrated, with more than 100 benchmark demonstration applications built; the core industrial scale will exceed 80 billion yuan.

In recent years, the "space economy" has become a hot topic, and satellite internet is regarded as the "cornerstone of the space economy".

As early as 2020, when the National Development and Reform Commission first clarified the scope of "new infrastructure", satellite internet, together with 5G, the Internet of Things and the Industrial Internet, was listed as one of the "communication network infrastructures".

Earlier this year, the government work report explicitly put forward the "accelerated development of satellite internet" for the first time as a separate task, marking a "major upgrade at the national strategic level".

The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan lists it, together with the national integrated computing power network and the information and communication network, as the "three networks", bringing it into the category of "moderately advanced construction", and requires "improving civil space infrastructure, coordinating the construction of satellite communication, navigation and remote sensing systems, and accelerating the networking of low-orbit satellite internet".

From the perspective of economic value, the development of satellite internet will open up brand new growth space.

It forms a complete industrial chain covering "satellite development - rocket launch - ground equipment - terminal application - operation services", which can support the integrated ecosystem of aerospace manufacturing and digital services.

Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2040, the global space economy market size is expected to exceed 1 trillion US dollars, among which satellite broadband will contribute 50% to 70% of the growth and become the competitive focus in the space economy sector.

However, at present, China's low-orbit satellite internet is still in the early stage of industrialization. Constellation networking, finalization of terminals, ground network construction and application verification are being advanced simultaneously, and there is still much room for improvement before full-scale large-scale commercial use. The industry consensus is that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the biggest opportunity for satellite internet lies in accelerating its development towards industrialization and consumer accessibility.

Specifically in Shanghai, a total of 256 satellites of the Qianfan constellation have been launched, making it the only commercial low-orbit broadband constellation in China that has entered large-scale networking, forming a two-line parallel pattern of "commercial operation + state-led team" with the GW constellation led by the national team. The G60 Satellite Digital Factory in Songjiang District has an annual production capacity of 300 satellites, and it only takes 1.5 days to produce a single satellite.

In the view of industry insiders, the action plan released by Shanghai this time covers the whole chain of technological research, infrastructure, industrial agglomeration and application demonstration, which is expected to promote Shanghai to form a nationally leading industrial cluster in this strategic emerging industry and become a new engine for economic growth.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "City Evolution Theory", written by Liu Yanmei, and published with authorization from 36Kr.