China Ends Reliance on US GPS with Beidou System
By wchung | 22 May, 2025

China has debuted its own Beidu satellite navigation system to users in other Asian nations as an alternative to the US-based Global Positioning System (GPS).

Beginning Thursday the Beidu system — also known as Compass — will offer free positioning, navigation, time and text messaging to users in the Asia-Pacific region, said company spokesman Ran Chengqi at a press briefing.

The positioning service will offer accuracy to within 10 meters (33 feet) of distance and about a foot per second accuracy in speed estimates. Time measurements will be accurate to 10 nanoseconds — far more than adequate for most civilian uses.

China has already been using the Beidu system for transportation, weather forecasting, marine fisheries, hydrological monitoring, and mapping.

In order to provide the new services throughout Asia, China launched six additional Beidou satellites in 2012 — four in medium Earth orbit at about 13,000 miles and two in geostationary orbit.

The Beidou system is expected to generate about 400 billion yuan ($63 billion) in annual sales of services to businesses in the transport, meteorology and telecommunications industries.

Like every other nation on earth China had been relying on the GPS system but launched Beidu to end reliance on a US-controlled system for fear the reliance might be turned to China’s disadvantage in the event of a military conflict.