Drones, chips, and navigation simulations are on display at the second International Summit on BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) Applications, which kicked off in Zhuzhou City of central China's Hunan Province on Thursday. 

Held from October 26 to 28, the summit has gathered more than 60 top domestic and international experts in related fields, with innovation competitions, policy releases, and project contract signings on the event roster. 

In 2022, China's domestic smartphone shipments reached 264 million units, of which 260 million phones support BDS, accounting for about 98.5 percent, according to a white paper on the development of China's Satellite Navigation and Location Services Industry, which was released on May 18.

Since BDS started serving global users, China's satellite navigation and positioning industry has witnessed fast and stable progress. In 2022, the total value of the industry exceeded 500 billion yuan (about $69.65 billion) in China.

BDS has made China's infrastructure smarter and safer, with its high-precision location capability bringing immense benefits to different economic sectors, said the white paper.

Jin Zhuanglong, China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology, attended the opening ceremony of the summit. He said the Chinese government attaches great importance to the development and scale application of the Beidou industry, and "Beidou+" and "+Beidou" have been helping all walks of life accelerating the digital and intelligent transformation, forming a good situation of deep application and large-scale development.

Launched in 1994, BDS is a global navigation satellite system constructed and operated independently by China. 

The construction of BDS-1 and BDS-2 was completed in 2000 and 2012, respectively. When BDS-3 was completed and put into service on July 31, 2020, China became the third country to have an independent global navigation satellite system.

Wide applications

BDS has been broadly providing services in many fields, including transportation, disaster prevention and alleviation, agriculture, and power, creating remarkable social and economic benefits.

In the transportation industry, BDS is widely used in services such as transportation process monitoring, highway infrastructure security monitoring, and high-precision monitoring of ports.

The BDS system was applied to approximately eight million road-operating vehicles, more than 47,000 ships, and more than 40,000 mainline postal and express delivery vehicles nationwide in 2022 to comprehensively improve the transportation informatization level and has significantly reduced the incidence of major traffic accidents.

In that period of time, mapping software has called  BDS for positioning more than 360 billion times a day.

In agriculture, more than 100,000 pieces of automatic agricultural machinery driving systems have been facilitated by the BDS, while 100,000 fishing boats were fitted with Beidou terminals.

Broad cooperation

China has carried out active international cooperation on BDS and advanced its applications across the world, contributing to building a global community of a shared future.

The mature technology of BDS is being utilized to help Pakistan establish its MM1 satellite-based augmentation system, said Li Dongjun, executive vice general manager of Great Wall Navigation Technology Co., Ltd. Upon establishment, the system will be independent from BDS, but it will be compatible and interoperable with BDS.

The company has also completed the development and deployment of the BDS Positioning Service System Platform for countries in the Lancang-Mekong region.

Based on the BDS, services such as land confirmation, precision agriculture, and smart ports, have been successfully applied in ASEAN countries, southwest Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa to serve local economic and social development.

(With input from Xinhua)