The Shanghai Stock Exchange has launched a regulatory “fast lane” for commercial rocket developers, a move designed to bankroll China’s answer to SpaceX as the race for orbital real estate intensifies. Effective late December 2025, the new guidelines pivot the STAR Market’s "Fifth Listing Standard" (STAR - Shanghai Stock Exchange Science and Technology Innovation Board) to prioritize technical maturity over financial health, exempting aerospace firms from traditional profitability and revenue thresholds.
To qualify, companies must achieve at least one orbital launch using a reusable architecture - even if the booster recovery itself fails. This strategic shift underscores Beijing's urgency to build out its national megaconstellations, Guowang and Qianfan, which aim to deploy nearly 30,000 satellites to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.
LandSpace Leads the Charge
LandSpace Technology Co. has emerged as the primary beneficiary of the policy shift. The Beijing-based startup officially completed its mandatory IPO tutoring with the CSRC on December 23, 2025, clearing the final regulatory hurdle for a planned debut in the first half of 2026.
The company's financial and technical trajectory illustrates the high-stakes nature of the sector:
- Capital Strength: LandSpace has raised over $500 million to date, anchored by a 900 million yuan ($123 million) infusion from the state-backed National Manufacturing Fund in late 2024.
- The "Messy" Milestone: On December 3, 2025, the company’s Zhuque-3—a stainless steel, methalox-powered rocket - successfully reached orbit. While the first-stage booster crashed in a fireball following an "anomaly" at 3km altitude, the mission satisfied the new "orbital success" benchmark required for listing.
A Competitive Bottleneck
The regulatory easing comes as China faces a critical bottleneck in launch cadence. While the state-owned Long March 12A also suffered a recovery failure during its debut in late December, private contenders like Space Pioneer are racing to iterate on "Falcon 9 clones" to lower costs.
By opening the public capital taps for pre-profit firms, Beijing is betting that the Shanghai STAR Market can provide the liquidity needed to transition from "expendable" launches to the high-frequency reusability required for national security. LandSpace currently targets mid-2026 for its first successful "soft" booster recovery, a milestone that could coincide with its first months as a public company.
→ Explore the full landscape of China’s manufacturing breakthroughs in the Tocco Report: China's New Industrial Stack Yearbook 2026.
