China poses biggest long-term competitive threat to SpaceX - Morgan Stanley By Investing.com

Investing.com-- Morgan Stanley said China's rapidly advancing reusable rocket program is emerging as the biggest long-term competitive threat to SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX), after the country successfully recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time.

The Wall Street brokerage said China's successful recovery of the Long March 10B booster marked a major step toward routine rocket reuse, although it cautioned that Beijing still needs to demonstrate repeated launches and reflights before achieving an operational reusable launch system.

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The brokerage said the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) became only the third entity after SpaceX and Blue Origin to recover an orbital-class booster, underscoring the country's accelerating ambitions in commercial space.

Morgan Stanley analysts said China's deep space ecosystem, spanning state-backed launch programs and private companies such as LandSpace, Galactic Energy and Space Pioneer, makes it the most significant competitive challenge to SpaceX's launch business over the long run.

The note highlighted that China carried out 90 orbital launches in 2025, compared with SpaceX's 165 Falcon 9 launches, making it the world's second-largest launch market by activity.

U.S. Space Force officials had estimated earlier this year that China was still three to five years away from mastering rocket reusability, although the Long March 10B demonstration could shorten that timeline, Morgan Stanley said.

The brokerage also pointed to China's broader space ambitions, including the planned Guowang and Qianfan low-Earth orbit satellite constellations, which together target about 28,000 satellites, as well as a proposed filing for more than 190,000 non-geostationary satellites.

Morgan Stanley said China is also investing heavily in space-based computing, citing the launch of the first satellites in the planned 2,800-satellite "Star Compute" orbital supercomputer network.

Despite the rising competition, Morgan Stanley maintained its "overweight" rating on SpaceX with a $300 price target, saying the company remains the global leader in launch cadence, reusable rocket technology and satellite connectivity, while warning investors not to underestimate China's progress in narrowing the gap.