China has recently launched a Global Positioning System (GPS) equivalent to the United States’ GPS and has gained international qualification to expand into global commercial aviation. This milestone for China is a potential boost for GNSS technology.

The home-grown BeiDou system has been recognized by the International Civil Aviation Organization as one of its standards, becoming a universal satellite navigation system for civil flights globally, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. “[This] fully proves that BeiDou has the ability to provide global navigation services in various industries,” the regulator said.

The Chinese system, completed in 2020, has 59 positioning satellites in its network. It marked one of Beijing’s efforts to achieve tech self-sufficiency amid a tense relationship with Washington. “It is indeed an important milestone,” said Guo Rui, CEO of Chongqing Changying Aviation Technology. “It will increase the diversity and redundancy of navigation systems, providing more options and backups for possible failures or disruptions.”

BeiDou and the US-made GPS are two of the four core providers of global satellite navigation systems, with the network also including Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System and the European Union’s Galileo.

China’s navigation system had already fostered a domestic market of more than 140 billion yuan last year, industry and information technology minister Jin Zhuanglong said in October. It has also achieved a wide range of applications in domestic transport, communications, and agriculture, according to a report by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location-Based Services Association of China (GLAC) last week.

Of the 13 million BeiDou devices produced in the first six months of the year, more than 60 percent were used in the transport systems, while mobile electronic devices accounted for nearly 30 percent and the agricultural sector 12 percent, according to the report. The output value of China’s satellite navigation industry reached 500.7 billion yuan (US$69 billion) in 2022, more than 30 percent of which was direct research and development and production.

Nearly 70 percent was, meanwhile, the output value created by the applications and services of navigation systems, according to a separate report published by GLAC in May. “We need to push it to go overseas,” said a Beijing-based analyst who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.“It may have broader application chances in countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, and those are friendly with China.”

Similar to the US and Russian versions, BeiDou has both military and civilian systems, however, GPS has occupied the market for more than three decades and it retains the largest share of the world’s commercially available positioning systems. In 2022, the GPS system held 42.9 percent of the global positioning systems market, according to a report by San Francisco-based market research company Grand View Research.

“BeiDou joining the network will bring more benefits to the global community, especially as China maps the Belt and Road Initiative’s growth,” said Tammy Qiu, industry insider and former national chair of the aviation and aerospace working group at a foreign chamber of commerce in China. It will “forge the creation of an integrated application ecosystem, unleashing massive market opportunity,” she added.