Chinese satellite system starts its global journey with Thailand

Beidou, also known as Compass, was put into commercial use late last year as a supplement to the US’ widely-used GPS platform, Europe’s Galileo and Russia’s Glonass. Its global outreach is an early illustration of the “diamond decade” of China-Asean cooperation – first outlined by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in September – as leading IT will be applied in more areas of cooperation.

Thailand intends to use the system initially for disaster relief, as well as transportation, power distribution and the environment.

Construction of a model station to allow Thai users to connect to the satellites will begin this month at an industrial estate in Chon Buri, followed by nationwide expansion beginning early next year. 

The deal with Thailand reached in March is believed to be worth about US$300 million and is part of China’s Asean outreach.

Premier Li has set a target for Sino-Asean trade of $1 trillion by 2020 – more than double last year’s trade – and has named Asean as China’s priority for overseas investment.

 

An advantage

Beidou is regarded as having an advantage over other systems in that it is better equipped with cutting-edge technologies. It has the potential to become the premier global navigation satellite system (GNSS) worldwide with the help of growing demand from China and elsewhere.

The global navigation market is on track to hit $220 billion by 2020, representing annual growth of more than 10 per cent, Europe’s GNSS agency has estimated.

Huang Xian, a researcher with the industry watchdog China Satellite Navigation Office, said China will promote Beidou-based applications mostly in Asia-Pacific because of footprint limits.

Applications include vessel monitoring, typhoon observation and positioning services for civil use. The system has 16 satellites and is expected to grow to 30 satellites by 2020, according to Chinese government sources.

Beidou is certainly powerful and capable of diverse uses. After the Ya’an earthquake in China on April 20, it played an important role in navigation and communication tasks during disaster-relief operations. 

It was also used to track and eventually capture in Laos the rogue militia leader Naw Kham, who killed 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River in 2011.

China’s choice of Thailand as its first Beidou customer outside of China reflects the strength of the relationship between the two countries and augurs well for future cooperation.

 

 

 

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