Recently, commercial aerospace has gained a strong presence in the market!
In the week of Dec. 4 to Dec. 10 alone, the mainland conducted five space launches, three of which were commercial rocket launches, and the frequency is increasing.
It is worth noting that in the Central Economic Work Conference that ended not long ago, it was proposed to build a number of strategic emerging industries such as commercial aerospace.
If 2015 is the first year of China's commercial aerospace development, then with policy support, market demand expansion and the participation of private capital, the vitality of this industry can no longer be ignored.
1. Development is the trend of the times
From ancient times to the present, human beings have never stopped chasing the stars and the sea.
The moment you look up at the starry sky, civilization shines brighter with the passage of time.
In modern society, every country has a dream of aerospace, which is also the dream of a strong country.
In the country's "14th Five-Year Plan", aerospace science and technology appeared for the first time in the content of "strengthening national strategic scientific and technological forces", and the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China also proposed to accelerate the construction of a space power in terms of building a modern industrial system.
Generally speaking, the direct input-output ratio of the aerospace industry is 1:2, while the driving radiation of related industries is between 1:8 and 1:14. Disruptive science and technology can not only change lives, but also give birth to new industrial formats, create advanced productivity, and bring new momentum to economic development.
In recent years, the mainland's aerospace industry has been economically vigorous, among which, commercial aerospace, as an important component, has initially completed the development process from 0 to 1, with carrier rocket launch and satellite development as the main business forms.
According to the statistics of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, from 2015 to 2020, the size of the mainland's commercial aerospace market increased from 376.42 billion yuan to one trillion yuan, and it is expected that the market size will reach 2.4 trillion yuan by 2024, with considerable potential.
It has to be said that this development has benefited from the strong support of policies over the years.
SpaceX has changed the pattern of the U.S. aerospace industry dominated by the "national team" with technological breakthroughs, and now the mainland's commercial aerospace is further expanding from military to civilian consumer demand, and the entry threshold for private enterprises has been significantly lowered.
In November 2014, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance and other departments issued the Guiding Opinions on Innovating Investment and Financing Mechanisms in Key Areas to Encourage Social Investment, encouraging private capital to actively participate in the commercial aerospace field, in 2015, the National Civil Space Infrastructure Medium and Long-Term Development Plan (2015~2025) guided social capital to participate in the construction of national civil space infrastructure, and in 2021, the 14th Five-Year Plan pointed out to build global coverage and efficient operation of communications, navigation, Remote sensing space infrastructure system, construction of commercial space launch sites, and further promote the development of commercial space... This series of policy orientations shows that the development of aerospace is inseparable from the guidance of the "national team", and it is more necessary for private enterprises to be active.
With the participation of private enterprises, commercial aerospace can not only effectively reduce costs and release more space application demand through technological breakthroughs, but also help the industry achieve sustainable development.
2. Jinan ran out
The trillion blue ocean is shining with golden light, so there are many active figures of private enterprises on the track, and there is strong support from local governments.
We found that a northern industrial city with a weak sense of existence is becoming more and more clear on the road of commercial aerospace development.
Jinan has become the first city in China to complete the comprehensive layout of the three important fields of commercial aerospace "communication, navigation and remote sensing".
The gold content of this first is not small, and in a sense, it has the tendency of pointing to "China's first commercial aerospace city".
So, why Jinan?
As we all know, compared with cities with outstanding aerospace industry foundations such as Xi'an, Beijing, Wuhan, and Chengdu, it does not have conspicuous endogenous genes.
The reason why it won the title of "No. 1 in the country" this time is that it has done great things quietly, kept up with the upsurge of commercial aerospace in a timely manner, and seized a new high ground for the development of the aerospace information industry.
Generally speaking, space below 100 km from the Earth's surface is "empty" and space above 100 km is "sky", and there is no absolute dividing line between the two.
The aerospace information industry is an emerging industry that uses space infrastructure and technical means to collect, store, process, and analyze information from the aerospace field and provide diversified services.
According to the Classification of Strategic Emerging Industries, aerospace information is an interdisciplinary industry between the high-end equipment manufacturing industry and the new generation information technology industry. According to the upstream and downstream relationship of the industry, it is mainly divided into four stages: satellite/rocket manufacturing, ground equipment manufacturing, launch services, and satellite application services, and its application fields are mainly satellite communications, satellite navigation, and satellite remote sensing.
It can be found that the aerospace information industry has made aerospace technology no longer "hanging on a high platform", but has been solidly implemented, especially with the application of the Beidou satellite navigation system and the Gaofen series of remote sensing satellites, the continental aerospace information industry chain has been maturing.
Jinan smelled the dividends of this industry, although it started late, but in the top-level design, industrial base development, talent reserves have been fully prepared, can be described as "latecomers".
In 2019, Jinan established a special class for the aerospace information industry chain with the Standing Committee of the Municipal Party Committee and the head of the Organization Department under the command of the "chain chief", and also cooperated with the Aerospace Information Innovation Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to jointly build an aerospace information industry chain with deep integration of production, learning and research.
Subsequently, it issued a number of blockbuster favorable policies ("Jinan Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of Aerospace Information Industry (2021-2023)", "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Satellite Navigation Industry in Jinan", etc.), and also formulated a five-year plan for the development of the aerospace information industry, accelerated the construction of two major bases for satellite assembly and rocket engine manufacturing, and won the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology for the Qilu Aerospace Information Research Institute to create a national technology innovation center to drive the high-quality development of the industry.
In addition to policy support, Jinan's economic development in recent years has also laid the foundation for the development of the aerospace information industry.
According to the latest data, Jinan's GDP in the first three quarters of 2023 will be 922.92 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.2% at constant prices, and the total economic output will surpass Hefei, ranking 18th in the country, and it has also run a good growth rate.
From an industrial point of view, this is all due to the fact that it attaches great importance to the development of the industrial economy and implements the strategy of strengthening the city through industry. As an important industrial town, Jinan has 38 of the 41 industrial categories, and is one of the cities with the most industrial categories in the country. In the first three quarters of this year, the added value of industries above designated size increased by 12.9% year-on-year, ranking first among all cities with a GDP of one trillion yuan.
At present, it focuses on high-end, intelligent, green and clustering, focusing on the four leading pillar industries of big data and new generation information technology, intelligent manufacturing and high-end equipment, fine steel and advanced materials, biomedicine and health, with a total scale of 1.4 trillion yuan.
Taking the new generation of information technology closely related to aerospace information as an example, Jinan High-tech Zone is the core area of development, which has built a new pattern of integrated development of industry application software, basic software, industrial software and security software, with more than 140,000 business entities and more than 70,000 core enterprises such as Inspur Group, Jin Hyundai and Huatian Software. As the first batch of state-level high-tech zones, in the first three quarters of this year, the GDP of the high-tech zone was 133.14 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.9% at comparable prices, leading the country and the province by 2.7 and 1.9 percentage points respectively.
Based on a relatively solid industrial foundation, Jinan has also gained confidence in the development of emerging industries such as aerospace information. In 2022, Jinan High-tech Zone will have more than 60 aerospace information industry-related enterprises, with sales revenue of more than 10 billion yuan. On the whole, Jinan currently gathers leading enterprises in the aerospace information industry such as Jinan Iron and Steel Defense, Zhongke Satellite, Future Navigation, and Times Low Altitude, bringing together more than 200 enterprises in the upstream and downstream industrial chains.
The agglomeration of enterprises has burst out with strong innovation vitality, which has made Jinan bear a lot of fruits in the aerospace information industry. From the successful launch of the world's first quantum micro-nano satellite "Jinan-1" on the "Lijian 1" carrier rocket of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to the successful launch of the "Quancheng-1" with one arrow and two satellites, and then to the successful launch of the Qilu-2 and No. 3 satellites on the Long March-2D carrier rocket... Jinan has shown its resilience in system research and development, constellation construction, and satellite applications.
In addition, the aerospace information industry deeply integrates the new generation of information technology, geographic information technology and aerospace industry, which means that it needs high-level applied talents to overcome the "stuck neck" technology for it.
At present, Jinan has laid out and built 11 national key laboratories, 112 provincial key laboratories, 251 municipal key laboratories, 71 provincial new R&D institutions, 30 provincial technology innovation centers and 77 provincial academician workstations, and the strength of research and development services is continuously improving. Jinan Science and Technology Innovation City of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has organized and carried out major scientific research, breaking through 32 "stuck neck" technologies and overcoming 167 key core technologies.
Jinan is naturally thirsty for the continuous inflow of professional talents. In terms of the aerospace information industry, in May 2022, the first "Aerospace Professional Training Course" was officially opened in Shandong Yingcai College, which is the first professional and technical talent course in the field of aerospace information in Jinan.
In addition, in September this year, Jinan announced that the first aerospace information university in China had been approved and was being built in Jinan. The university is located in Zhangqiu, focusing on the field of aerospace information, focusing on the development of graduate education, and moderately developing the education of undergraduate and international students, which is expected to drive the development of 11 national key laboratories and 3 provincial laboratories.
3. The competition is fierce
Through the above, it can be found that Jinan's policy-driven, industrial manufacturing accumulation, and technical resource gathering are conducive to optimizing and strengthening the aerospace information industry, thereby expanding the economy and improving the industrial energy level.
However, it also has its own shortcomings, although Jinan has a certain industrial base, but in depth and breadth is still not qualified, which means that once those rival cities with a solid aerospace foundation take a big step to speed up, it is easy to be left behind.
Specifically, there is a certain imbalance in the layout of its industrial chain, which needs to be further integrated and developed with other emerging strategic industries, and there is a lack of hardware enterprises, and the industrial ecosystem needs to be improved urgently.
Take Beijing as an example, which is the place where the mainland's commercial aerospace started earlier, and has obvious advantages in the industrial ecological layout.
For example, Beijing's Daxing District is the main position for the development of high-end manufacturing industries and the deepening of commercial aerospace layout. Beijing Yizhuang - the only state-level economic and technological development zone in Beijing, has gathered more than 40 aerospace enterprises, basically covering carrier rockets, satellite development, satellite applications, model supporting, ground equipment, technology applications and other fields, the number of private rocket development enterprises accounted for more than 70% of the country, high-quality enterprises have gathered, known as "rocket block" in the industry.
At the same time, as the birthplace of China's aerospace, Fengtai District of Beijing has formed an aerospace industry cluster with a scale of 100 billion yuan, including the aerospace industry cluster represented by the East Highlands and Yungang area, and the commercial aerospace industry cluster with Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park Fengtai Park as the main body, building a diversified development pattern based on the rocket industry and supplemented by satellite applications, aerospace materials, aerospace parts, aerospace testing and other industries, and the scale of the commercial aerospace industry has exceeded 28 billion yuan.
On the whole, Beijing has basically formed a satellite network industry layout of "South Arrow and North Star", and has positioned satellite Internet as a new economic growth pole.
In addition to Beijing, other cities are also eager to try, Chongqing proposed to build a satellite Internet comprehensive application demonstration zone by 2030, and form a 100-billion-level aerospace information industry cluster; Shanghai released the "Shanghai Action Plan for Promoting Commercial Aerospace Development and Building a Highland of Space Information Industry (2023-2025)" in November... Obviously, the aerospace information industry has become the next key direction for many cities.
In contrast, Jinan's competitive pressure is not small. Winning the first place is only a successful node, and it still needs to further improve the business environment, strengthen the introduction of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, and strengthen industrial clusters.
From the perspective of the development of the entire industry, the aerospace information industry is in a golden period of development in which policy, capital and technology are superimposed and resonant, and as the industry is paid more and more attention, the development of commercial aerospace will be more open, diversified and smooth. The investment and construction related to the city will eventually be projected onto its own industrial upgrading, empowering economic development and achieving a benign complementary effect.
The Economist APP Industry Observation Group
For more industry research and analysis, please see:
[1] "2023-2028 China State Key Laboratory Construction, Development and Operation Management Model Innovation Analysis Report", Qianzhan Industry Research Institute
[2] "New Trends in China's Smart TV Interaction in 2024", Qianzhan Industry Research Institute
[3] "2023-2028 China Industrial Park Construction and Operation Market Prospect and Transformation and Upgrading Countermeasures Analysis Report", Qianzhan Industry Research Institute
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Resources:
[1] "Silent, Silent, Jinan Stands on a New Outlet", love Jinan
[2] "Chasing Dreams "Empty Sky", Jinan is not ordinary", Jinan Times