China is taking its rivalry with the US to the heavens, spending at least US$9 billion to build a celestial navigation system and cut its dependence on the US-operated GPS amid heightening tensions between the two countries.
Location data beamed from GPS satellites are used by smartphones, car navigation systems, the microchip in your dog’s neck and guided missiles — and all those satellites are controlled by the US Air Force. That makes the Chinese government uncomfortable, so it is developing an alternative that a US security analyst called one of the largest space programs the country has undertaken.
“They don’t want to depend on the US’ GPS,” said Marshall Kaplan, a professor in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Maryland. “The Chinese don’t want to be subject to something that we can shut off.”
The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, currently serving China and its neighbors, is to be accessible worldwide by 2020 as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) strategy to make his country a global leader in next-generation technologies. Its implementation reverberates through the corporate world as makers of semiconductors, electric vehicles and airplanes modify products to also connect with Beidou to keep doing business in the world’s second-biggest economy.
Assembly of the new constellation is approaching critical mass after the launch of at least 18 satellites this year, including three this month. On Monday last week, China launched two more Beidou machines, increasing the number in operation to more than 40. Beijing plans to add 11 more by 2020.
Beidou is one element of China’s ambitious campaign to displace Western dominance in aerospace. A state-owned company is developing planes to replace those from Airbus and Boeing, and domestic startups are building rockets to challenge the commercial launch businesses of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Next month, China is scheduled to launch Chang’e 4, a lunar probe that would be the first spacecraft to the far side of the moon. A Mars probe and rover also are scheduled for liftoff in 2020.
“It is classic space race sort of stuff,” said Andrew Dempster, director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research in Canberra.
China started developing Beidou in the 1990s and is to spend an estimated US$8.98 billion to US$10.6 billion on it by 2020, an analysis published last year by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said.
The system is to provide positioning accuracies of 1m or less with use of a ground support system.
By comparison, GPS typically provides accuracies of less than 2.2m, which can be improved to a few centimeters with augmentation systems, the commission said.
“The Beidou system has become one of the great achievements in China’s 40 years of reform,” Xi said in a Nov. 5 letter to the UN International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems.
The system, named after the Big Dipper star pattern (beidou, 北斗), is at the core of an industry that could generate more than 400 billion yuan (US$57.58 billion) in revenue in 2020, the China Satellite Navigation Office forecast.
Beidou also has potential for export as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the US-China security commission said.
NavInfo, a maker of electronic maps that is backed by Tencent Holdings, wants to begin mass-producing semiconductors for navigation systems using Beidou in 2020, project director Wang Yan said.
Beijing-based NavInfo, which supplies Tesla and BMW, said it expects annual demand of 15 million Beidou-linked chips for autonomous vehicles.
In September, NavInfo started providing Beidou-enabled mapping and positioning services for the Singaporean government.
“China needs to have its own satellite navigation system from a long-term, strategic perspective,” Wang said. “Beidou is the only option.”
That carries potential implications for the balance of power between the nations, as Beidou’s deployment likely will fuel creation of a supply network for China’s People’s Liberation Army.
“The PLA will additionally have its own domestic ‘industrial chain’ on which to draw for secure components,” the US-China commission said.
Qianxun Spatial Intelligence, a Shanghai-based venture between e-commerce titan Alibaba Group Holding and state-owned defense contractor China North Industries Group, provides positioning services for cars, public safety and civil aviation using Beidou and other networks.
To help stay competitive against budding Chinese counterparts, foreign companies are including Beidou compatibility in their products.
Qualcomm, the biggest maker of chips used in smartphones, has been supporting Beidou “for a long time,” the San Diego-based company said.
Those chip sets are also used in wearables and automobiles.
Most smartphones from global sales leader Samsung Electronics support Beidou in addition to GPS, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said, as do handsets from Chinese rivals Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi, according to state media.
Huawei is China’s top-selling brand.
China is also the largest auto market and the government wants all car navigation systems to be Beidou-compatible within two years.
Volkswagen — the market leader in passenger car sales — is changing the equipment in its vehicles to enable network access, the company said.
“At the moment, Volkswagen Group China does not sell cars with Beidou-enabled equipment, but the next infotainment system generation for cars in the Chinese market will be rolled out in 2020,” the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said. “This system will be ready to receive Beidou information.”
Toyota Motor is in discussions with companies about Beidou, the Japanese automaker said.
In the sky, a regional jet developed by state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) last year became the first plane to use Beidou.
Avionics-systems maker Rockwell Collins, a supplier to Airbus, Boeing and COMAC, does not offer products that can access the Chinese satellite network, the company said.
That might have to change, as the Chinese government eventually would require airlines flying in the country to add Beidou equipment, Kaplan said.
“They will have to have the Chinese system on board,” he said, citing the Chinese government’s security concerns. “The Chinese will require airlines to have both systems.”
A gap appears to be emerging between Washington’s foreign policy elites and the broader American public on how the United States should respond to China’s rise. From my vantage working at a think tank in Washington, DC, and through regular travel around the United States, I increasingly experience two distinct discussions. This divergence — between America’s elite hawkishness and public caution — may become one of the least appreciated and most consequential external factors influencing Taiwan’s security environment in the years ahead. Within the American policy community, the dominant view of China has grown unmistakably tough. Many members of Congress, as
The Hong Kong government on Monday gazetted sweeping amendments to the implementation rules of Article 43 of its National Security Law. There was no legislative debate, no public consultation and no transition period. By the time the ink dried on the gazette, the new powers were already in force. This move effectively bypassed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. The rules were enacted by the Hong Kong chief executive, in conjunction with the Committee for Safeguarding National Security — a body shielded from judicial review and accountable only to Beijing. What is presented as “procedural refinement” is, in substance, a shift away from
The shifting geopolitical tectonic plates of this year have placed Beijing in a profound strategic dilemma. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) prepares for a high-stakes summit with US President Donald Trump, the traditional power dynamics of the China-Japan-US triangle have been destabilized by the diplomatic success of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington. For the Chinese leadership, the anxiety is two-fold: There is a visceral fear of being encircled by a hardened security alliance, and a secondary risk of being left in a vulnerable position by a transactional deal between Washington and Tokyo that might inadvertently empower Japan
After declaring Iran’s military “gone,” US President Donald Trump appealed to the UK, France, Japan and South Korea — as well as China, Iran’s strategic partner — to send minesweepers and naval forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. When allies balked, the request turned into a warning: NATO would face “a very bad” future if it refused. The prevailing wisdom is that Trump faces a credibility problem: having spent years insulting allies, he finds they would not rally when he needs them. That is true, but superficial, as though a structural collapse could be caused by wounded feelings. Something
RSS