China's independently developed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System will cover all the countries along the Belt and Road route in 2018, and its scope will further expand worldwide in 2020.
According to Fu Yong, director of the China National Administration of GNSS and Applications, the operation of the BeiDou system has been stable since it was first implemented. The number of civilian users has reached 10 million. Key indicators such as accuracy of positioning and timing are quite strong.
In 2016, the system earned 70,000 new users. It answered 250 million positioning queries and provided 3 billion text messages, in addition to 8.3 million instances of two-way timing service.
At present, construction of BeiDou's global system is accelerating. The system is expected to provide basic service to Belt and Road countries by 2018; by 2020, its services will extend across the world.
The BeiDou project was formally launched in 1994. As of June 2016, 23 BeiDou satellites had been launched. The aim is to complete the deployment of the 35 satellite constellation around 2020.
