The Long March family is China’s state-built fleet of orbital rockets, with more than 600 missions since 1970. In Chinese, the name is Chang Zheng, or CZ for short. Today, it covers roughly a dozen active variants that share little beyond the name. The solid-fueled CZ-11 can lift 700 kilograms, while the hydrogen-powered CZ-5 can carry 25 metric tons. They’re different rockets built for different jobs, all flying under the same banner.
The numbers aren’t sequential. The CZ-12 is newer than the CZ-5 but smaller, while the CZ-8 came after the CZ-11 and serves an unrelated purpose. Think of each number as a model name, not a version number.
The Active Long March Fleet
| Variant | Payload to low Earth orbit (LEO) | Propellant | Main role and site |
|---|---|---|---|
| CZ-2D | 3,500 kg | Nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) | General satellite launches, Jiuquan and Taiyuan |
| CZ-2F | 8,800 kg | Nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH | Crewed Shenzhou flights, Jiuquan |
| CZ-3B/E | 11,500 kg | Nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH | Geostationary missions, Xichang |
| CZ-3C/E | 9,100 kg | Nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH, hydrogen upper stage | Geostationary missions, Xichang |
| CZ-4B and CZ-4C | 4,200 kg | Nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH | Sun-synchronous orbits, Taiyuan |
| CZ-5 | 25,000 kg | Hydrogen and kerosene with liquid oxygen | Heavy lift, Wenchang |
| CZ-5B | 25,000 kg | Hydrogen and kerosene with liquid oxygen | Large payloads direct to LEO, Wenchang |
| CZ-6A | Over 8,000 kg | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Constellation batches, Taiyuan |
| CZ-7 | 14,000 kg | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Tianzhou cargo flights, Wenchang |
| CZ-7A | 7,800 kg to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Geostationary transfer, Wenchang |
| CZ-8 | 8,100 kg | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Sun-synchronous and commercial, Wenchang |
| CZ-8A | 9,800 kg | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Constellation deployment, Wenchang |
| CZ-11 | 700 kg | Solid | Fast-response and sea launch |
| CZ-12 | 12,000 kg | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Commercial pads at Wenchang |
| CZ-10 | 70,000 kg | Kerosene and liquid oxygen | Crewed lunar flights, in test. See the Long March 10 page |
Three Generations Are Flying at Once
The fleet splits into three technology generations that overlap in service rather than replacing each other.
The oldest group, the CZ-2, CZ-3 and CZ-4 series, descends from 1970s ballistic missile work and burns nitrogen tetroxide with unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, or UDMH. That propellant is storable at room temperature and ignites on contact, which removes the need for an ignition system. It is also corrosive and toxic, and a spent stage that lands on farmland is a public-health problem rather than scrap metal.
The second group, built around the YF-100 kerosene engine, covers the CZ-5, CZ-6, CZ-7 and CZ-8. These launch from the coastal Wenchang site, where dropped stages fall into the South China Sea. The switch was as much about where debris lands as about performance.
The newest group is reusable. The CZ-10B recovered a first stage at sea in July 2026, and the CZ-12A is close to its own recovery attempt, according to SpaceNews. Details of both sit on the China reusable rockets page.
What the Numbers and Letters Mean
CZ-2, CZ-3 and CZ-4 were assigned by design bureau and mission type in the 1970s and 1980s, not by size. The letters that follow carry the real detail.
- A B or C variant usually means added boosters or a different upper stage.
- An A suffix on the newer rockets usually means a stretched or uprated version.
- An E means an enhanced fairing or structure.
CZ-8 and CZ-8A illustrate the pattern. The CZ-8A adds a hydrogen upper stage and a wider fairing, lifting its capacity from 8,100 to 9,800 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit, which is aimed squarely at launching flat-packed constellation satellites in larger batches.
What Each Long March Variant Carries
Payload capacity alone does not tell you what a Long March flies, because launch site and orbit matter more.
- Crew rides the CZ-2F from Jiuquan, the only human-rated variant. It has carried every Shenzhou mission.
- Cargo to Tiangong rides the CZ-7 from Wenchang.
- Geostationary communications satellites ride the CZ-3B from Xichang, the workhorse of China’s commercial launch business.
- Constellation batches for Guowang and Qianfan ride the CZ-6A, CZ-8 and CZ-8A, chosen for cadence rather than raw lift.
- Lunar and station modules ride the CZ-5 from Wenchang, which has the fairing volume nothing else in the fleet offers.
Which site a rocket uses is not interchangeable. The Chinese launch sites page covers why each pad serves particular orbits.
How Often the Family Flies
The Long March fleet carried most of a national record 92 orbital launches in 2025, and China has targeted roughly 140 launches across all its rockets in 2026. Those numbers put the family in the same annual range as the entire United States launch industry, though a large share of the American total comes from one reusable vehicle flying repeatedly.
The fleet is now organized around cadence. The CZ-8A and CZ-12 exist because constellation deployment needs many medium-lift flights rather than a few large ones, and the new commercial pads at Wenchang were built to turn those flights around faster than the older inland complexes can.
Who Builds the Long March
The Long March rockets are built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), a state-owned group, through two main design academies. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) in Beijing designs the CZ-2, CZ-3, CZ-5, CZ-7 and CZ-10. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) designs the CZ-4, CZ-6 and CZ-12.
That split explains apparent duplication in the fleet. The CZ-6A and the CZ-8 do broadly similar jobs at similar payload classes because two academies developed them in parallel, and both stayed in service.
The CZ-5B and the Debris Problem
The CZ-5B has repeatedly dropped a large stage back to Earth without control, and that has produced most of the international criticism the family attracts. The variant carries its core stage all the way to orbit rather than dropping it partway, so a roughly 20-metric-ton stage is left circling until atmospheric drag brings it down weeks later, on a track nobody can predict precisely.
Most launch providers either deorbit a spent stage on a chosen path or arrange the flight so the stage never reaches orbit. The CZ-5B design does neither. The pieces that survive reentry are large, and the landing zone is only known to within thousands of kilometers until the final hours.
The inland sites create a separate version of the same problem. Stages dropped from Jiuquan, Taiyuan and Xichang fall on Chinese territory, sometimes near villages, which is why the hydrazine variants draw complaints at home. Orbital debris and reentry risk more broadly are covered on the space debris page.
Where the Family Is Heading
Two additions would change the shape of this table. The CZ-10 entering service gives China a rocket in the heavy-lift class needed for crewed lunar flights, and the CZ-9, a fully reusable super-heavy design still on paper, would put China in the size class of Starship if it flies. Neither has launched.
The more immediate change is the retirement of the hydrazine variants. As the CZ-8A and CZ-12 take over the sun-synchronous and commercial workload from the CZ-2D and CZ-4 series, the toxic-propellant share of the Long March rocket fleet falls. To follow which variant flies next, check the manifest published by China Great Wall Industry Corporation, the state marketing arm for commercial Long March missions.