As technological developments augur an era of renewed space exploration, China is aiming to become a major player. In the first part of this two-part series, Wency Chen and Mia Nurmamat examine how Hainan province is betting on a growing aerospace cluster to rewrite its economic playbook beyond tourism.<\/p>\n
On Hainan\u2019s northeastern coast, launch towers rise abruptly from a flat landscape of coconut palms and open sky. At Pad 1 of the commercial spaceport in Wenchang, an 83-metre (272 feet) service tower stands surrounded by four slender, steel lattice towers, designed to protect the launch site from lightning during the island\u2019s frequent tropical storms.<\/p>\n
No mission is scheduled, but an orange flame flickers from a gas vent at one facility.<\/p>\n
Long known for its coconuts, its namesake chicken and generations of emigrants who left for Southeast Asia in search of a living, Wenchang has been thrust onto the frontier of national development. Beijing\u2019s space ambitions have turned the city into a showcase for rocket launches \u2013 and given Hainan an unexpected catalyst to reshape an economy long reliant on tourism and consumer services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As technological developments augur an era of renewed space exploration, China is aiming to become a major player.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2102,131236,114,123913,76773,99148,266331,266328,61,60,266333,266330,266326,76770,10183,82,22413,247,266329,100157,266325,266334,266327,266332],"class_list":["post-627116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-beijing","tag-chang-guang-satellite-technology","tag-china","tag-gansu","tag-guangdong-society-of-reform","tag-hainan","tag-hainan-commercial-space-launch-site","tag-hainan-international-commercial-aerospace-launch","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jixing-meteorite-museum","tag-longlou","tag-nanhai-net","tag-peng-peng","tag-qianfan","tag-science","tag-shandong","tag-space","tag-star-market-daily","tag-wenchang","tag-wenchang-international-aerospace-city","tag-wenchang-space-launch-site","tag-xu-xikai","tag-ye-shiyang"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}