The Chinese BeiDou (北斗) Navigation Satellite System would be complete this month when its final satellite goes into orbit, giving China greater independence from US-owned GPS and heating up competition in a sector long dominated by the US.
The idea to develop BeiDou took shape in the 1990s as the military sought to reduce reliance on the GPS run by the US Air Force.
When the first BeiDou satellites were launched in 2000, coverage was limited to China. As use of mobile devices expanded, China in 2003 tried to join the Galileo satellite navigation project proposed by the EU, but later pulled out to focus on BeiDou.
In the age of the iPhone, the second generation of BeiDou satellites went operational in 2012, covering the Asia-Pacific.
China began deploying the third generation of satellites aimed at global coverage in 2015.
The 35th and final BeiDou-3 satellite is to be launched this month — the day has yet to be announced — meaning BeiDou has more satellites in its system than GPS’ 31, and more than Galileo and Russia’s Glonass.
With estimated investment of US$10 billion, BeiDou would keep the communications network of the Chinese military secure, avoiding the risk of disruption to GPS in the extreme event of conflict.
Weapons targeting and guidance would also improve.
When complete, BeiDou’s location services would be accurate down to 10cm in the Asia-Pacific, compared with GPS’ 30cm range.
“BeiDou was obviously designed a few decades after GPS, so it has had the benefit of learning from the GPS experience,” Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research Director Andrew Dempster said. “It has some signals that have higher bandwidth, giving better accuracy. It has fewer orbit planes for the satellites, making constellation maintenance easier.”
BeiDou-related services such as port traffic monitoring and disaster mitigation have been exported to about 120 countries, state media reported.
Many of those countries are involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to create a modern-day Silk Road of trade and investment.
In a report last year, the US congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned that China promoted launch services, satellites and BeiDou under its “Space Silk Road” to deepen reliance on China for space-based services, potentially at the expense of US influence.
In 2013, Thailand and Pakistan were the first foreign countries to sign up for BeiDou’s services.
Within China, more than 70 percent of mobile phones were BeiDou-enabled as of last year, state media reported.
China’s satellite navigation sector might top 400 billion yuan (US$56.47 billion) in value this year, state media said.
Ahead of BeiDou-3’s completion, satellite-related shares have soared. Beijing BDStar Navigation Co (北京北斗星通導航), which makes chips that receive BeiDou signals, has surged 34.4 percent this year.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS