plawolf
Lieutenant General
First if all, these are civilian satellites, not military, so do not represent the state-of-the-art of what China can do in terms of imaging resolution.
When we are talking about civilian kit, cost-benefit becomes a massively important factor, and often operators don't go for the very best and instead opt for a good enough package that only costs a fraction of what the best would set them back.
Since the Dubai Sat was its first, it would serve more than purely civilian purposes and is almost certainly a quasi-military programme, so its costs would be subsidied but the military who would prefer better capabilities even if it costs significantly more. I expect its a similar deal with India.
China may also draw upon civilian satellites if it came to it, but it has its own dedicated military spysat programmes and constellations, so would have less interest in trying to use civilian satellites for that purpose. So the PLA would probably much rather launch more of their dedicated spysats than subsidies civilian programmes they will probably never be called upon to use.
Secondly, you are either incredible naive, or deliverably overlooking the fact that the Dubai/Indian satellites are on utterly different levels to China's in terms of indigenous tech content.
The Dubai and Indian satellites are jammed packed with foreign parts that the host nations cannot produce themselves. Whereas China's satellites are 100% designed and built in China.
Its like comparing someone who went to the store and bought all the components needed for a computer and then put it all together against someone who made every last chip and circuit of a computer themselves from raw mineral ores.
