The idea to develop Beidou came up in the 1990s as the military sought to reduce dependence on the Global Positioning System (GPS) run by the US Air Force. When the first Beidou satellites were launched in 2000, coverage was limited to China. In 2003, China tried to join the Galileo satellite navigation project proposed by the EU, but later withdrew to develop its own Beidou system.
The second generation of Beidou satellites went operational in 2012, covering the APAc region. China started deploying the third generation of satellites aimed at global coverage in 2015.
With overall investments estimated at USD 10 billion, Beidou is designed to keep the communications network of the Chinese military secure, avoiding the risk of disruption to GPS in the extreme event of conflict. When complete, Beidou’s location services are accurate down to 10 cm in the Asia-Pacific, compared with GPS’s 30-cm range.
According to state media reports, Beidou-related services such as port traffic monitoring and disaster mitigation have been exported to around 120 countries. More than 70 percent of mobile phones across China were Beidou-enabled at end-2019, state media reported, including models made by Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo and Samsung. Millions of taxis, buses and trucks were also able to receive Beidou signals.
