China has conducted 56 orbital launches so far this year, with 52 successful and four failures, putting its success rate at 92.86 percent, according to Ming Pao, based on publicly available data. The success rate has declined for three consecutive years, from 97.1 percent in 2024 to 95.9 percent in 2025 and 92.86 percent so far this year, which translates to one failure every 34 launches in 2024 to every 25 launches in 2025 and every 14 launches this year.
The latest failure involved the recent Long March-7A, following unsuccessful launches of the Long March-3B, Ceres-2, and Zhuque-3 earlier this year. The failures come as China enters a period of unusually intensive launch activity. Chinese media estimates that the country conducted 44–48 launches during the first half of 2026, the highest number for the first half of any year, with commercial launches accounting for more than 60 percent.
The surge reflects China’s push to build a large-scale low-Earth-orbit satellite infrastructure, including satellite internet constellations such as Qianfan. The rapid expansion of commercial space activity and satellite deployments is increasing pressure on launch providers to maintain a high launch cadence. The declining success rate suggests that the acceleration of China’s space-launch industry may also be accompanied by greater operational and technical risks as launch frequency increases.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), August 12, 2026
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202608120044.aspx