Operator of China's first purpose-built commercial spaceport, a four-way state joint venture; it builds neither rockets nor satellites — it provides pads and services
The operator of the Hainan commercial spaceport at Wenchang. It builds neither rockets nor satellites — what it provides is launch pads, supporting facilities and coordination, which is why this site files it under ground systems and TT&C rather than launch vehicles.
⚠️ The two pads are routinely numbered the wrong way round, and this is the most common error about this site. The Long March 12 maiden flight of 2024-11-30 used Pad 2; Pad 1's first launch was the Long March 8A on 2025-03-12 carrying 18 Qianfan satellites. Pad 1 is dedicated to the Long March 8 family, with an 83 m, 11-storey tower and a target turnaround of “launch in 7 days, recover in 7 days”; Pad 2 is a universal pad with interfaces for 19 different rocket types, China's first multi-vehicle pad.
Pad 1 was built on an EPC basis by CASC's CALT (Beijing Institute of Space Launch Technology), CASC's first spaceport EPC project. ⚠️ A SASAC page carries a headline saying Pad 1 was built by CASIC, which contradicts CASC's own detailed account; that page's body is robots-blocked and could not be read here, so this site does not publish CASIC as the builder and does not arbitrate between the two.
On ownership this site can confirm the composition but not the percentages. The visible shareholders are Hainan provincial state capital plus three central SOEs — CASC, CASIC and China SatNet. That composition rests on a single source, and the percentages, the unified social credit code and the legal representative could not be verified (the Chinese company registries were all unreachable). What is clear is that there is no private capital among the disclosed shareholders, so it is state-controlled; but sources conflict on where control sits — the Hainan provincial government and People's Daily consistently frame it as provincially led, while SpaceNews has described the site as “part of CASC infrastructure”. Both are presented here without picking a side.
Three names should not be conflated: this company operates the spaceport; Hainan Aerospace Group is a new provincial state group established in August 2026 as the province's implementer for major national tasks and infrastructure — whether it is this company's parent could not be determined and is not asserted here; and Hainan Aerospace Investment Management Co. is a third entity whose status is likewise unverified. Note also a near-identically named “Hainan Commercial Aerospace Investment Management Co.”, reported dissolved in January 2025 in a listed company's disclosure — not the same firm.
No revenue figure is published anywhere, and no launch-service price list or pad lease rate could be found. Official descriptions point to a landlord-plus-services hybrid — rocket and satellite firms build their own test facilities on site while the spaceport coordinates — rather than a pure per-launch fee. This site does not estimate.
The 2026 Wenchang International Aerospace Forum opened; the Wenchang aerospace city administration signed agreements with 17 supply-chain companies and a cross-border aerospace data processing trade zone was inaugurated. The “21 launches” figure was said by Hainan Governor Liu Xiaoming, not by a company executive; this site could not verify it launch by launch.
Lift-off at 00:38, carrying the fifth batch of Qianfan constellation satellites. Pad 1 was built by CASC's CALT on an EPC basis, and the spaceport gained two-pad capability from this point. ⚠️ A common error is to treat 2024-11-30 as Pad 1's first launch; that was Pad 2.
Pad 2 is a universal pad with interfaces for 19 rocket types, China's first multi-vehicle pad. ⚠️ This was Pad 2's first launch, not Pad 1's — the two numbers are frequently reversed in Chinese reporting.
Pad 2 was completed on 2024-06-06; Pad 1 had been completed on 2023-12-29. The site covers 133.33 hectares.
China's first spaceport purpose-built for commercial launch. The operating company's incorporation date is given by a single source as 2022-06-02 with registered capital of RMB 1.5bn, neither confirmed against the company registry.
At the 25 August forum, the Wenchang Space City administration signed with 17 industry-chain companies, Hainan Aerospace Group signed with six institutions, and two cross-border space cooperation platforms were unveiled.