With rising trade and tech tensions between the U.S. and China, satellite navigation is becoming a new battleground. China’s BeiDou system, competing with the U.S. GPS, is securing its dominance domestically and replacing GPS on Chinese devices. In 2024, BeiDou generated 575.8 billion yuan (US$79.9 billion), marking a 7.39 percent increase from the previous year, according to the GNSS and LBS Association of China.
China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system is compatible with 288 million smartphones, mainly from Huawei and Xiaomi. It tracks locations over 1 trillion times daily. Users in China use BeiDou to travel over 4 billion kilometers each day. The system is expanding from smartphones and in-vehicle navigation to wearables, drones, electric bikes, and robots. Its growth is also driven by restrictions on GPS in China.
Chinese businesses use BeiDou for both land and maritime navigation. The system supports China’s expanding merchant navy, with most vessels, including Cosco’s, transitioning from GPS to BeiDou or using both.
After solidifying its domestic market lead, BeiDou aims to challenge GPS’s global dominance. China sees foreign adoption of BeiDou as a boost to its soft power, aligning with the Belt and Road Initiative to promote its navigation system abroad.
The China Satellite Navigation Office reports that BeiDou’s signals are widely accessible across Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. The primary user base comprises the agriculture, transport, and infrastructure sectors.
Furthermore, BeiDou indicates that the system is extensively utilized commercially for various applications, including port management in Pakistan, land planning and river transport in Myanmar, precision agriculture and pest control in Laos, urban planning in Brunei, and maritime patrols in Indonesia.
Experts believe BeiDou has surpassed GPS in satellite count, signal strength, and positioning accuracy. BeiDou has 56 satellites compared to GPS’s 31, with BeiDou’s newer constellation. It also has ten times more global monitoring stations, enhancing its accuracy. BeiDou offers public positioning accuracy within one meter and military accuracy within one centimeter, whereas standard GPS typically provides accuracy within three meters.
A Harvard Belfer Center paper stated that China’s BeiDou system surpasses GPS in technical aspects. Sarah Sewall and co-authors noted that BeiDou offers the most accessible and accurate Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) data globally. In 2020, Nikkei Asia reported BeiDou outperforms GPS in 165 countries. Despite this, GPS benefits from being widely used for years and deeply integrated with American technologies.
Experts warn that systems like BeiDou can be used for surveillance, adding security concerns to China’s technology exports. While SatNav is crucial to daily life globally, it holds geopolitical significance and faces intense market competition. China developed its satellite navigation system to reduce reliance on U.S. technology, worried that in wartime, the US could restrict access, affecting military operations. SatNav has numerous military applications, including guided munitions and missiles.
