beijingwalker
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How China’s Advanced BeiDou Surpassed America’s GPS Satellite Navigation I US China Tech Competition
The United States undoubtedly remained world leader in satellite-based positioning for around 4 decades with its well renowned Global Positioning System commonly known as GPS. But a small incident at the end of 20th century displaced America from its dominant position 25 years later.
In 1996 during the Taiwan Crisis, China fired three missiles to locations on the Taiwan Strait as a warning. While the first missile hit its intended target, the People’s Liberation Army lost track of the other two. China claims that the U.S. had cut off the GPS signal to the Pacific that China relied upon for missile tracking.
The event was taken by China as an unforgettable humiliation and prompted Beijing to build its own global navigation & positioning satellite system. Almost 25 years later, China’s BeiDou has become most powerful competitor of GPS.
By 2020, China overtaken its U.S. rival in size as there were 35 BDS satellites in operation, compared with 31 for GPS.
Along with Chinese 5G technology, BDS is called by Beijing "The Two Pillars of a Great Power.” The power of Chinese BDS can be ascertained by the remarks of General James Holmes, the head of the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command, who said in a conference in Washington that pilots of the American elite U-2 spy plane wear watches that receive satellite navigation coordinates from China’s BeiDou system when GPS is jammed.
China’s development and promotion of BDS presents implications for the United States in security, economic, and diplomatic areas.
This rivalry is further intensified by the recent agreement signed between the operators of the Russian high-altitude satellite system Glonass and China’s BeiDou on cooperation in the field of ensuring the complementarity of the global navigation satellite systems in terms of system timescales.
This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed “unprecedented” close ties with China at a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing ahead of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony. Global Navigation Satellite Systems or GNSS provide positioning, navigation, and timing information by broadcasting radio signals to devices on the ground.
Four such global systems are currently in operation including United States' GPS, Russia's Glonass, the European Union's Galileo and Chinese BeiDou or BDS. China launched its BeiDou or Northern Dipper program in the 1990s. By 2000, the construction of the BDS-1 was completed which was mainly used to broadcast positioning and timing signals over China. 12 years later, the construction of BDS-2 was completed which was designed to provide navigation services over the broader Asia-Pacific region.
The 30th satellite of BeiDou’s third generation BDS-3 network and the 55th of the whole BDS family was launched in July 2020. Later that month, BDS-3 with current network of 30 satellites was officially commissioned at a ceremony attended by President Xi Jinping.
Presently, the BeiDou satellite navigation industry is growing at an average annual rate of 20 percent as China has been pushing for the adoption of BDS as an alternative to the US-owned GPS. The value of BDS satellite navigation industry is estimated to be worth US$156 billion by 2025.
There are clear military implications as BeiDou is a force multiplier in the military context for China. Another key player in the field is Russia. BeiDou and Glonass each have their own advantages. If they could be deeply linked or even interoperable, they could form an ideal navigation system, which would not only facilitate cross-border transport between the two sides in peacetime, but also improve the stability and survivability of the whole navigation system by relying on each other in wartime.
