China launches orbital rockets from four state-run launch centers, a commercial spaceport, and a platform at sea. The state sites are Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert, Taiyuan in Shanxi, Xichang in Sichuan, and Wenchang on the coast of Hainan Island. Hainan is also home to a separate commercial spaceport, while solid-fuel rockets launch from ships off Shandong.
Geography, not convenience, determines which site a rocket uses. A site’s latitude affects which orbits are easiest to reach, while an inland location limits how large a rocket can be transported there and influences where spent stages come down.
Every Chinese Launch Site
| Site | Location | Latitude | Main role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center | Inner Mongolia, Gobi desert | About 41 degrees north | Crewed Shenzhou flights, high-inclination orbits, commercial pads at the Dongfeng zone |
| Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center | Shanxi province | About 38 degrees north | Sun-synchronous and polar orbits, constellation batches |
| Xichang Satellite Launch Center | Sichuan province | About 28 degrees north | Geostationary communications satellites, BeiDou navigation |
| Wenchang Space Launch Site | Hainan island, coast | About 19 degrees north | Heavy lift, Tiangong modules, lunar missions, crewed Moon program |
| Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site | Hainan island, next to Wenchang | About 19 degrees north | Commercial launches, four pads as of August 2026 |
| Sea launch platforms | Off Haiyang, Shandong | Variable | Solid-fuel rockets, adjustable inclination |
Jiuquan Launches People and Almost Everything Else
Jiuquan is China’s oldest launch center and its only human-rated one. Every Shenzhou crew has left Earth from there on a Long March 2F, and the site handles a wide spread of satellite work besides. It sits in the Gobi desert on the Inner Mongolia border, which gives it the open, empty downrange corridor a crewed abort needs.
Its latitude of about 41 degrees north suits high-inclination orbits and works against geostationary ones. A launch to the equatorial belt from that far north has to spend propellant changing plane, so those missions go to Xichang instead.
Jiuquan also hosts the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone, a set of pads used by private companies. LandSpace flew Zhuque-3 from there and landed its first stage about 390 kilometers downrange in Gansu, covered on the Zhuque-3 page.
Taiyuan Does Polar and Sun-Synchronous Work
Taiyuan launches into polar and sun-synchronous orbits, the paths satellites use to pass over the same ground at the same local time each day. Earth-observation spacecraft, weather satellites, and reconnaissance payloads all want that geometry.
The site has taken on much of China’s constellation deployment. Long March 6A and Long March 8 flights carrying Guowang and Qianfan batches launch from there, which is why Taiyuan’s flight rate has climbed alongside the satellite constellations it feeds.
Xichang Handles the Geostationary Business
Xichang is China’s geostationary launch center and the home of its commercial export business. At about 28 degrees north it is the southernmost of the three inland sites, which lowers the plane change a geostationary mission has to perform.
The Long March 3B, the rocket China Great Wall Industry Corporation sells abroad for telecommunications satellites, flies from there. So do most BeiDou navigation launches. Its drawback is the terrain: Xichang sits in mountainous Sichuan, and spent boosters fall on populated ground, which has produced repeated incidents.
Wenchang Was Built for the Rockets That Could Not Get Anywhere Else
Wenchang exists because China’s largest rockets cannot travel by rail. The three inland sites receive hardware through tunnels sized for the narrower vehicles of the 1970s, which capped stage diameter at about 3.35 meters. A 5-meter core cannot make the trip.
Building on the coast removed that limit. Stages arrive by ship at whatever diameter the design needs, which is what made the Long March 5, 7, 8 and 10 possible. The site launched the Tiangong station modules and the Chang’e lunar sample missions, and it is where China’s crewed lunar flights will lift off.
Latitude helps too. At about 19 degrees north, Wenchang is the closest Chinese site to the equator, and an eastward launch there collects more free speed from Earth’s rotation than one from Jiuquan. Spent stages drop into the South China Sea rather than onto villages.
The Commercial Spaceport Next Door
The Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site is China’s first spaceport built specifically for commercial flights. It is run by the state-owned Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Company, which publishes no public website, rather than by the military-run state centers. CASC describes the site as China’s first commercial spacecraft launch site. Pad 1 is dedicated to the Long March 8 series. Pad 2 is a universal pad able to serve several vehicles.
Two further pads finished construction in August 2026, and the operator has said it is aiming to support more than twenty launches in 2026 across the original two pads. The separation matters commercially: a private company waiting for a slot at a state site competes with national missions, and a dedicated commercial pad removes that queue.
Sea Launch Moves the Latitude
China launches solid-fuel rockets from converted ships operating off Haiyang in Shandong province. A ship can sail to the latitude a customer’s orbit needs, which removes the fixed-latitude penalty every ground site carries, and it drops spent stages in open water.
The tradeoff is size. Sea-launched vehicles are small, mostly the Long March 11 and commercial Jielong rockets carrying a few hundred kilograms, because a ship cannot support the infrastructure a large liquid-fuel rocket requires.
Why the Old Sites Are Inland at All
China put its first three launch centers deep inland for military reasons, not orbital ones. The sites were established during the 1960s and 1970s, when the program grew out of ballistic missile work and planners assumed a coastal facility would be vulnerable to attack or observation. Jiuquan, Taiyuan and Xichang all sit far from any border a hostile aircraft would cross.
That decision still shapes the program six decades later. Every rocket built to fly from those sites had to fit the rail tunnels leading to them, which is why the Long March 2, 3 and 4 families share a 3.35-meter core diameter across otherwise unrelated designs.
The Soviet Union made a similar choice at Baikonur and the United States did the opposite at Cape Canaveral, launching east over the Atlantic from the start. China spent the 2010s buying its way out of the constraint by building Wenchang.
Who Should Use Which Site
Operators launching to sun-synchronous orbit go to Taiyuan, and operators launching to geostationary transfer go to Xichang. Neither choice is discretionary. The plane change from the wrong latitude costs propellant the payload would otherwise use.
Commercial customers with a small satellite and a flexible orbit have the widest choice, including sea launch. Customers needing a large fairing or a heavy payload have the narrowest: Wenchang is the only site that can take delivery of a 5-meter stage.
What Would Change This Map
Two developments would redraw it. The new Hainan commercial pads raise China’s commercial launch ceiling as they enter service, since pad availability rather than rocket supply has been the constraint for private operators. Recovery infrastructure is the second: landing zones, sea platforms, and the transport to move a recovered booster back to a factory are all new categories of site China is only starting to build.
To check which pad a given mission uses, consult the mission announcements published by the China National Space Administration before relying on a third-party tracker.