Digital News

　　China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) continues to empower various industries, with significant advancements in its applications and notable breakthroughs in its development.

　　The 2025 White Paper on the Development of China’s Satellite Navigation and Positioning Service Industry, released on May 18 in Beijing, shows that the total output value of China’s satellite navigation and positioning service industry reached 575.8 billion yuan in 2024, up 7.39 percent year-on-year; the cumulative number of satellite navigation patent applications exceeded 129,000, maintaining its global leadership position...

　　Satellite navigation and positioning services are a key strategic pillar for the nation’s economy and people’s livelihoods, playing an essential role in areas such as transportation, communication timing, disaster relief, and the low-altitude economy. As China’s self-developed and independently operated global satellite navigation system, the BDS has evolved from being non-existent to fully operational, from active to passive, and from serving a regional to a global scope since its initiation as a major national science and technology project in 1994.

　　At the press conference on the white paper, Yu Xiancheng, president of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Location Based Services (LBS) Association of China (GLAC), said that in 2024, the core output value of chips, algorithms, and terminal devices, directly related to China’s satellite navigation and location-based service industry, went up to 169.9 billion yuan. The derived output value from related industries reached 405.9 billion yuan, with the total number of enterprises and public institutions in related fields nearing 20,000 and the workforce approaching one million.

　　With the satellites well established in space and fully integrated into daily life, the ongoing growth in industrial output is fueled by the widespread use of the BDS in China’s consumer market. By the end of 2024, approximately 288 million mobile phones in the country were equipped with positioning capabilities enabled by the BDS; high-precision lane-level navigation covered more than 99% of urban and rural roads across the country, providing over 1 trillion location services daily and supporting a total daily navigation mileage of over 4 billion kilometers; it also empowered road tests for intelligent connected vehicles and ensured the application of intelligent assisted driving in more than 50 cities nationwide.

　　“The BDS not only meets domestic demands, but also enables people all over the world to enjoy high-quality public navigation services from China,” said Li Donghang, head of the Beijing GLAC BeiDou-Space Time Technology Research Institute. The BDS is rapidly expanding its global reach, with its services and products now available in over 140 countries and regions.

　　According to the information, as a core supplier of global satellite navigation systems recognized by the United Nations, the BDS has been fully integrated into the standards of 11 international organizations, including those for civil aviation, maritime, and mobile communications, continually expanding its international network. More than 30 African countries, including Nigeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Cameroon, and Djibouti, have established BeiDou Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS), providing high-precision positioning services for local water conservancy, transportation, agriculture, and meteorological monitoring. In South America, the Chancay Port in Peru is the first smart port to apply the “5G + BeiDou high-precision positioning + AI” technology.

　　According to estimates from professional institutions, China’s low-altitude economy is currently valued at over 500 billion yuan, and it is expected to rise to 2 trillion yuan by 2030. According to Yu Xiancheng, high-precision positioning and navigation services are the cornerstone of the low-altitude economy. In the future, the BDS will expedite its integration with cutting-edge technologies like 5G communication and artificial intelligence, enhancing its impact on low-altitude transportation, logistics, cultural tourism, and urban management.