Analysis of hotspot areas in China's satellite internet innovation policies and research on policy evolution

Satellite internet has become a cross-domain system with both strategic and infrastructure attributes. Existing studies have examined its technical trajectories and geopolitical implications, but provide less systematic evidence on how innovation-policy mixes evolve across instruments, time and space. Focusing on China, this paper constructs a corpus of 132 central and subnational policy documents and codes 363 substantive policy-instrument reference points using a satellite-internet adaptation of the Rothwell and Zegveld supply-, environment- and demand-side framework. It combines manual coding, co-word network analysis and spatial comparison to map stated policy attention. The results show a persistent supply-side dominance, with attention concentrated on infrastructure, operation services and application-oriented industrial development, while regulation, finance and ecosystem coordination remain less visible. Spatially, policy supply is concentrated in major industrial regions, but lower-centrality provinces often display locational or industrial specialisation rather than simple imitation. The findings offer a replicable text-based approach to analysing policy mix and attention in cross-domain infrastructure systems and identify the coordination mechanisms needed for the next stage of satellite-internet development.