The size and scale of China’s geospatial information sector dwarfs just about anything you can think of.
Last year alone, the Chinese geospatial sector produced an output of around $193 billion and employed 4 million people across approximately 269,000 ‘enterprise units’.
That’s according to figures contained in a new report from the China Association for Geographic Information Industries, released last week during the 2026 China Geospatial Information Industry Conference in Chongqing.
Economic output was up 5.9% on the previous period, and in 2025 around 45,000 new enterprises were registered, comprising a year-on-year increase of 19.7%.
According to the report, in 2025 there were around 75 main board-listed companies dealing in geospatial information, and a total of 447 of what the Chinese call ‘little giant’ firms noted for high-tech innovation.
Those 75 mainland-listed companies had a total market capitalisation of approximately $212 billion.
By contrast, in November 2024 an Australian report found that geospatial data and technologies contributed $39 billion and 12,000 full-time equivalent jobs to the Australian economy in the 2023–24 financial year.
The forecast was for that to increase to as much as $90 billion per year by 2033–34, along with an additional 32,000 full-time jobs.
Speaking with China Central Television, Zhou Chenghu, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that China has been making significant advances in both geospatial research and technological development.
Indeed according to the report, in the space arena, by the end of 2025 China had cumulatively launched almost 700 civilian remote sensing satellites, including more than 120 last year alone.
Zhou Chenghu said that the country’s Beidou GNSS and the real-time location services it enables, greatly benefits the geospatial sector.
China has announced plans for a next-generation Beidou system. Launch of the first experimental satellites is scheduled to begin around 2027, with operational deployment starting in approximately 2029 and constellation completion targeted for 2035.
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