China’s innovation momentum is accelerating across multiple high-value industries, extending far beyond its established leadership in electric vehicles, solar modules and advanced manufacturing. Recent datasets and research show how a combination of large-scale investment, regulatory agility and deep industrial capacity is enabling China to push rapidly into new technological frontiers — reshaping global competition in the process.

One pillar of this expansion is visible overseas. The China Low Carbon Technology FDI Database reports that since 2022, Chinese companies have committed over USD 227 billion to green-technology manufacturing abroad, surpassing the Marshall Plan in today’s dollars. By 2024, these investments totalled 461 projects in 54 countries, including nickel-processing plants in Indonesia, gigafactories in Europe, electrolyser facilities across the Gulf, and green-hydrogen initiatives in North Africa. Battery-related projects alone exceed USD 62 billion, reflecting the capital intensity and strategic importance of energy-storage supply chains.

At home, China is rapidly moving up the value chain in emerging sectors. Autonomous-vehicle developers have built the world’s largest robotaxi ecosystem, with pilots running in 50+ cities and costs significantly below those of US rivals due to integrated supply networks for sensors, lidars and computing hardware. In pharmaceuticals, China has transformed itself into the second-largest developer of new drugs, buoyed by sweeping regulatory reforms, expanded clinical-trial capacity and an approval system that now moves faster than many Western regulators.

This acceleration is underpinned by sustained investment in research. PPP-adjusted figures show that China’s national R&D spending in 2023 was nearly equal to that of the United States, marking a pivotal shift in global innovation capability. A deep talent base, extensive manufacturing clusters and intense domestic competition further push firms to scale quickly and seek overseas markets.

Together, these dynamics form a distinctive innovation model that blends scale, speed and strategic coordination. For governments, universities and industry leaders worldwide, understanding how China orchestrates this growth — and where it is headed next — is becoming essential to navigating the future of global technology.

India is investing in infrastructure at a scale unprecedented in its post-liberalisation history. Capital expenditure on infrastructure has now crossed 3% of GDP, spanning railways, highways, ports, power plants and airports—assets designed to last well over half a century. Yet, as new research shows, a growing share of this infrastructure is coming up in regions increasingly exposed to climate extremes, raising a critical question for policymakers, insurers and investors alike: can India afford to insure the future it is building?

A new report by Climate Trends on climate risks and insurance for India’s infrastructure argues that climate impacts are no longer episodic shocks. Instead, they are following a clear upward trajectory in frequency, severity and geographic spread, particularly after the mid-2010s. Hydro-meteorological disasters—floods, extreme rainfall, cyclones and landslides—now dominate India’s climate risk profile, with flood risk emerging as the most persistent hazard for fixed, high-value assets.

When Growth and Risk Rise at Different Speeds

One of the report’s central findings is the non-linear relationship between asset growth and climate exposure. Using Delhi as a case study, the analysis shows that while urban expansion grew at roughly 1.3% CAGR between 1986 and 2016, flood exposure increased at nearly 2.46% CAGR, creating a widening divergence that is projected to grow further over time.

This divergence matters because infrastructure assets are geographically fixed and designed for long operational lives. As asset concentration rises and climate impacts become more predictable, the report warns that certain regions may approach the threshold of uninsurability, where premiums become unaffordable or coverage simply unavailable.

Insurers See Opportunity—and Limits

To test these risks against market realities, the researchers surveyed leading non-life insurers and reinsurers operating in India, including SBI General Insurance, Munich Re India, Swiss Re India and General Insurance Corporation of India.

The responses reveal a nuanced picture. Insurers broadly agree that most of India remains insurable, and climate risk insurance is still viewed as a business opportunity. However, hydropower projects and national highways located in flood- and landslide-prone regions repeatedly emerged as areas of concern. One insurer reported rising premium unaffordability for hydropower projects—an especially notable finding given that many planned hydropower assets are located in high-risk Himalayan regions vulnerable to landslides, floods and glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

>> Globally, insured property losses exceeded USD 140 billion in FY 2024–25

>> India’s natural catastrophe losses in 2023 alone reached USD 12 billion

A consistent challenge flagged across insurers is the difficulty of pricing climate risk under deep uncertainty. Respondents highlighted gaps in modelling for long-term risks such as sea-level rise, forest fires and compound events, raising the likelihood of a widening protection gap between economic losses and insured coverage.

Losses Are Already Mounting

The financial context underscores why these concerns are intensifying. Globally, insured property losses exceeded USD 140 billion in FY 2024–25, while India’s natural catastrophe losses in 2023 alone reached USD 12 billion, significantly above the previous decade’s average.

Sub-national data further sharpens the picture. States such as Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Ladakh and several north-eastern states are identified as among the most climate-vulnerable. Yet these regions also host some of India’s largest infrastructure investments, amounting to nearly Rs 2.95 lakh crore—from port modernisation projects in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh to tunnels, highways and hydropower projects in the Himalayas.

Insurance Is Evolving—but Not Fast Enough

Insurers acknowledge the gap and point to ongoing innovation. Parametric insurance products for heat stress, excess rainfall and flooding are gaining traction, alongside state-level risk transfer mechanisms. Yet coverage remains absent for several high-impact events, including cloudbursts and landslides, even as these hazards grow more frequent.

At the same time, India’s insurance market is expanding rapidly. Premiums are projected to grow at 6.7% in life insurance and 8.3% in non-life insurance through 2028, reflecting both economic growth and rising climate vulnerability.

The concern, however, is whether risk pricing can keep pace with physical reality.

Integrating Climate Risk Before the First Brick

The report also says that climate resilience must shift from being a post-disaster consideration to a core design constraint in infrastructure planning. Among its key recommendations are the standardisation of regulatory frameworks for risk disclosure, underwriting, premium pricing and loss assessment, alongside investment in advanced actuarial models and innovative instruments such as parametric insurance and catastrophe bonds.

Aarti Khosla, Founder and Director of Climate Trends, notes: “As India seeks big investments at the World Economic Forum and plans double-digit (nominal) growth over the next five years, it would be remiss to not point out the risks to India’s infrastructure posed by climate impacts and extreme weather events – which are unarguably increasing in frequency, severity, and geographical spread. The country’s rising exposure for its essential assets could thus lead to mounting climate-induced losses, which would be a fiscal and financial burden. Climate resilience must therefore be integrated into infrastructure planning from the very beginning to minimise the costs of post-disaster reconstruction. Also, several steps will have to come together to ensure long-term insurance viability for such assets, such as advanced actuarial models and standardised frameworks for risk disclosure, premium pricing and loss assessment.”

The Risk Beneath the Growth Story

India’s infrastructure push is central to its growth ambitions and long-term self-sufficiency. But the evidence suggests that climate risk is fast becoming a primary determinant of whether that growth remains financially sustainable. Without integrating resilience and insurability into planning decisions today, the cost of tomorrow’s infrastructure may be borne not just by insurers, but by public finances and future generations.

On a rooftop in northern Tehran, long after midnight, a young engineering student adjusts a flat white dish toward the sky. The city around him is digitally dark—mobile data throttled, social media blocked, foreign websites unreachable. Yet inside his apartment, a laptop screen glows with Telegram messages, BBC livestreams, and uncensored access to the outside world.

Scenes like this have appeared repeatedly in footage from Iran’s unrest broadcast by international news channels.

But there’s a catch. The connection does not travel through Iranian cables or telecom towers. It comes from space.

Above him, hundreds of kilometres overhead, a small cluster of satellites belonging to Elon Musk’s Starlink network relays his data through the vacuum of orbit, bypassing the state entirely.

For governments built on control of information, this is no longer a technical inconvenience. It is a political nightmare. The image is quietly extraordinary. Not because of the technology — that story is already familiar — but because of what it represents: a private satellite network, owned by a US billionaire, now functioning as a parallel communications system inside a sovereign state that has deliberately tried to shut its citizens offline.

The Rise of an Unstoppable Network

Starlink, operated by Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX, has quietly become the most ambitious communications infrastructure ever built by a private individual.

As of late 2025, more than 9,000 Starlink satellites orbit Earth in low Earth orbit (LEO) (SpaceX / industry trackers, 2025). According to a report in Business Insider, the network serves over 9 million active users globally, and Starlink now operates in more than 155 countries and territories (Starlink coverage data, 2025).

It is the largest satellite constellation in human history, dwarfing every government system combined.

This is not merely a technology story. It is a power story.

Unlike traditional internet infrastructure — fibre cables, mobile towers, undersea routes — Starlink’s backbone exists in space. It does not cross borders. It does not require landing rights in the conventional sense. And, increasingly, it does not ask permission.

Iran: When the Sky Replaced the State

During successive waves of anti-government protests in Iran, authorities imposed sweeping internet shutdowns: mobile networks crippled, platforms blocked, bandwidth throttled to near zero. These tactics, used repeatedly since 2019, were designed to isolate protesters from each other and from the outside world.

They did not fully anticipate space-based internet.

By late 2024 and 2025, Starlink terminals had begun appearing clandestinely across Iranian cities, smuggled through borders or carried in by diaspora networks. Possession is illegal. Penalties are severe. Yet the demand has grown.

Because the network operates without local infrastructure, users can communicate with foreign media, upload protest footage in real time, coordinate securely beyond state surveillance, and maintain access even during nationwide blackouts.

The numbers are necessarily imprecise, but multiple independent estimates provide a sense of scale. Analysts at BNE IntelliNews estimated over 30,000 active Starlink users inside Iran by 2025.

Iranian activist networks suggest the number of physical terminals may be between 50,000 and 100,000, many shared across neighbourhoods. Earlier acknowledgements from Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX had activated service coverage over Iran despite the lack of formal licensing.

This is what alarms governments most: the state no longer controls the kill switch.

Ukraine: When One Man Could Switch It Off

The power — and danger — of this new infrastructure became even clearer in Ukraine.

After Russia’s 2022 invasion, Starlink terminals were shipped in by the thousands to keep Ukrainian communications alive. Hospitals, emergency services, journalists, and frontline military units all relied on it. For a time, Starlink was celebrated as a technological shield for democracy.

Then came the uncomfortable reality.

Investigative reporting later revealed that Elon Musk personally intervened in decisions about where Starlink would and would not operate. In at least one documented case, coverage was restricted near Crimea, reportedly to prevent Ukrainian drone operations against Russian naval assets.

The implications were stark: A private individual, accountable to no electorate, had the power to influence the operational battlefield of a sovereign war. Governments noticed.

Digital Sovereignty in the Age of Orbit

For decades, states have understood sovereignty to include control of national telecom infrastructure, regulation of internet providers, the legal authority to impose shutdowns, the power to filter, censor, and surveil.

Starlink disrupts all of it.

Because, the satellites are in space, outside national jurisdiction. Access can be activated remotely by SpaceX, and the terminals can be smuggled like USB devices. Traffic can bypass domestic data laws entirely.

In effect, Starlink represents a parallel internet — one that states cannot fully regulate, inspect, or disable without extraordinary countermeasures such as satellite jamming or physical raids.

Authoritarian regimes view this as foreign interference. Democratic governments increasingly see it as a strategic vulnerability. Either way, the monopoly problem is the same: A single corporate network, controlled by one individual, increasingly functions as critical global infrastructure.

How the Technology Actually Works

The power of Starlink lies in its architecture. Traditional internet depends on fibre-optic cables across cities and oceans, local internet exchanges, mobile towers and ground stations, and centralised chokepoints.

Starlink bypasses most of this. Instead, it uses thousands of LEO satellites orbiting at ~550 km altitude, user terminals (“dishes”) that automatically track satellites overhead, inter-satellite laser links, allowing data to travel from satellite to satellite in space, and a limited number of ground gateways connecting the system to the wider internet.

This design creates resilience: No single tower to shut down, no local ISP to regulate, and no fibre line to cut.

For protesters, journalists, and dissidents, this is transformative. For governments, it is destabilising.

A Private Citizen vs the Rules of the Internet

The global internet was built around multistakeholder governance: National regulators, international bodies like the ITU, treaties governing spectrum use, and complex norms around cross-border infrastructure.

Starlink bypasses much of this through sheer technical dominance, and it has become a company that: owns the rockets, owns the satellites, owns the terminals, controls activation, controls pricing, controls coverage zones… effectively controls a layer of global communication.

This is why policymakers now speak openly of “digital sovereignty at risk”. It is no longer only China’s Great Firewall or Iran’s censorship model under scrutiny. It is the idea that global connectivity itself might be increasingly privatised, personalised, and politically unpredictable.

The Unanswered Question

Starlink undeniably delivers real benefits, it offers connectivity in disaster zones, internet access in rural Africa, emergency communications in war, educational access where infrastructure never existed.

But it also raises an uncomfortable, unresolved question: Should any individual — however visionary, however innovative — hold this much power over who gets access to the global flow of information?

Today, a protester in Tehran can speak to the world because Elon Musk chooses to allow it.

Tomorrow, that access could disappear just as easily — with a policy change, a commercial decision, or a geopolitical calculation.The sky has become infrastructure. Infrastructure has become power. And power, increasingly, belongs not to states — but to a handful of corporations.

There is another layer to this power calculus — and it is economic. While Starlink has been quietly enabled over countries such as Iran without formal approval, China remains a conspicuous exception. The reason is less technical than commercial. Elon Musk’s wider business empire, particularly Tesla, is deeply entangled with China’s economy. Shanghai hosts Tesla’s largest manufacturing facility in the world, responsible for more than half of the company’s global vehicle output, and Chinese consumers form one of Tesla’s most critical markets.

Chinese authorities, in turn, have made clear their hostility to uncontrolled foreign satellite internet, viewing it as a threat to state censorship and information control. Beijing has banned Starlink terminals, restricted their military use, and invested heavily in its own rival satellite constellation. For Musk, activating Starlink over China would almost certainly provoke regulatory retaliation that could jeopardise Tesla’s operations, supply chains, and market access. The result is an uncomfortable contradiction: the same technology framed as a tool of freedom in Iran or Ukraine is conspicuously absent over China — a reminder that even a supposedly borderless internet still bends to the gravitational pull of corporate interests and geopolitical power.