China recently opened its domestic satellite navigation network to commercial use across the Asia-Pacific region.
The move underscored China's emergence as an independent space power challenging the primacy of the United States, Russia, Europe and Japan.
The network offers a still-to-be-proven alternative in the region to the well-established and highly accurate U.S. global positioning system (GPS), and similar satellite-based constellations being developed by Russia and Europe. Until now, use of the Beidou network has been restricted to the Chinese armed forces and government. It has 16 navigation satellites in operation and number is due to reach 35 by 2020 to become a global GPS service.