Let Beidou Starlight Illuminate Every Path of China's High-Quality Economic Development — An Exclusive Interview with Liu Jingnan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor at Wuhan University, and Director of the National Satellite Navigation System Engineering Technology Research Center

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Securities Times reporter Han Zhongnan Jia Zhuang

From Beidou-1 to Beidou-3, China’s satellite navigation system has taken 32 years to forge its own path of independent innovation. Today, Beidou has achieved global coverage, and its service performance surpasses GPS. In the era when the low-altitude economy, autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence are booming, how can the spatiotemporal information industry move from “following” to “leading”? How can it become the foundation for high-quality development’s “new infrastructure” through integrated innovation and coordinated empowerment? Securities Times’ “People’s Finance News · Panorama” column has specially invited Liu Jingnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, a professor at Wuhan University, and director of the National Satellite Navigation System Engineering Technology Research Center, to deeply decode Beidou’s past, present, and future.

In his view, the spatiotemporal information industry behind Beidou is a kind of “slow variable.” It may not “go viral overnight” like the internet industry, but its impact is far-reaching. “Just like water and air—when you’re used to it, you hardly feel its presence; once it’s gone, many things will come to a standstill. I hope the whole society will place even greater emphasis on the foundational and strategic value of the spatiotemporal information industry, so that Beidou’s starry light will illuminate every road to China’s high-quality economic development.”

Beidou is not a replica of GPS, but China’s original “strategic cornerstone”

Securities Times reporter: You once said that “the essence of human civilization history is the evolution of spatiotemporal sensing and cognition capabilities.” Beidou has undergone 32 years of development. Its service coverage has expanded from regional to global. In what ways is its importance reflected?

Liu Jingnan: From ancient people measuring the length of a gnomon’s shadow to identifying the Big Dipper’s handle direction by the Beidou stars, to today’s use of the electromagnetic signals of a “Beidou” satellite constellation to replace starlight signals, Beidou provides all-weather, precise spatiotemporal coordinates for mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, and man-made infrastructure. What changes are the technical means; what does not change is humanity’s philosophical questions—“Where am I?”, “Where do I want to go?”, and “How do I get there?” The core purpose is to find more abundant resources for survival and development. The importance of the spatiotemporal information industry can be discussed from three dimensions.

First, spatiotemporal information is the “unit of measurement” for the digital economy. Calling ride-hailing cars, placing orders on e-commerce platforms, and scrolling short videos to watch local recommendations—we generate data every day, and over 80% of it carries spatiotemporal location tags. In a sense, without precise spatiotemporal information, the digital economy’s “building” loses its coordinate system.

Second, the spatiotemporal foundation is the “infrastructure” for serving and empowering emerging industries. For the low-altitude economy, autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence—these exciting emerging industries all share a common underlying need: high-precision, high-reliability spatiotemporal position information services. Taking the artificial intelligence industry as an example, the training and inference of large models requires vast quantities of spatiotemporal-labeled data; otherwise, it is hard to align with physical space. In other words, spatiotemporal information is the bridge that helps artificial intelligence move from the “digital world” into the “physical world” of human activities.

Third, spatiotemporal capability is a “strategic cornerstone” for national security. Spatiotemporal information is related to defense security, economic security, and public security. If a country’s key infrastructure—such as the power grid, communications network, financial system, transportation, and so on—relies entirely on satellite navigation and time services from other countries, then it is essentially handing its “lifeline” to someone else. The 32-year construction process of the Beidou system is, in essence, a journey of China’s efforts to secure spatiotemporal information sovereignty. I often express this view to international colleagues: Beidou is not a “China-version GPS.” Beidou is Beidou. It has taken a technical route completely different from GPS and developed unique capabilities that GPS does not have. Today, Beidou has achieved global coverage, surpassing GPS in global service performance and accuracy—an extraordinary achievement, but also only the new starting point of a long march of thousands of miles.

Behind the doubling of output value is the leap of the industry chain—from “good” to “strong”

Securities Times reporter: In 2012, the Beidou industry’s scale in China was just over 100 billion yuan. In 2024, the overall output value of China’s Beidou industry reached 575.8 billion yuan, up 7.39%, and over the past 12 years it has increased nearly fivefold. What characteristics does China’s Beidou industry chain show today?

Liu Jingnan: The rapid growth of the Beidou industry reflects its development journey from nothing to having, from having to being better, and from being better to being strong. First, the industry chain’s independent and controllable capability has increased significantly. Companies such as HiSilicon, u-blox? Starlink? (Note: please keep original names intact), HuaDa Beidou, Tegu Microelectronics, and Dream-Chip Technology’s Beidou chips already have competitiveness in global markets. In the terminal layer, domestic Beidou terminals have a prominent cost-performance advantage, with the shipment volume of intelligent smartphones supporting Beidou accounting for over 99% of the total smartphone shipments in China.

Second, the richness of application scenarios is leading globally. China’s Beidou application scenarios are broad and deeply penetrating, leaving nothing comparable around the world. From electronic fences for shared bicycles and route navigation for delivery riders, to precise timing for high-speed rail control systems and time synchronization for power systems, and on to marine fisheries, precision agriculture, disaster monitoring, and smart cities—Beidou has already been integrated into all aspects of the national economy. What is especially heartening is that Beidou is giving birth to a batch of entirely new application forms. For example, “Beidou + low-altitude economy,” “Beidou + intelligent connected vehicles,” and so on.

Securities Times reporter: In supporting the low-altitude economy, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, smart agriculture, disaster prediction, and more, what specific roles has Beidou played?

Liu Jingnan: Beidou’s unique advantages are not only reflected in end-to-end independent innovation, but also in ground-based applications. Around Beidou, China has developed a series of original applications. For example, by using “Beidou + high-precision maps” to support the development of autonomous driving, in cities such as Changsha, Wuhan, and Shenzhen, autonomous driving vehicles equipped with Beidou high-precision positioning have already been operating on open roads. Compared with GPS, Beidou’s PPP-RTK fusion positioning performs better in terms of positioning continuity and reliability in urban canyons.

Beidou also empowers marine fisheries and agriculture. At present, more than 800,000 fishing vessels nationwide have installed Beidou terminals. When typhoons arrive, the fishery administration department sends warnings to fishing vessel groups at sea via Beidou short messages; fishermen also report their positions through Beidou. In Jianjiang, Heilongjiang Province, through Beidou navigation, unmanned seeding transplanters significantly improve the level of automated transplanting, driving local crop yields to increase by over 5%. In disaster prediction, by using Beidou’s high-precision positioning to monitor crustal deformation, landslides, and more, and combining it with Beidou short messages’ emergency communication capability when communications are interrupted, a disaster prevention and mitigation system with “monitoring + early warning + emergency communication” as an integrated three-in-one approach has been formed.

Breaking through the “small, scattered, weak, and churned” cycle—achieving “overtaking by switching lanes” through integrated innovation

Securities Times reporter: The booming upward momentum of the Beidou industry has also driven the development of chips, components, algorithms, software, navigation data, terminal equipment, and infrastructure. In your observation, what bottlenecks and challenges still exist in the industry’s development process?

Liu Jingnan: At present, Beidou companies are generally small in scale, and the trend toward market competition becoming an “inward-turning” rat race is obvious. Although there are already more than 20,000 Beidou-related companies, there are not many leading enterprises with truly core competitiveness. In manufacturing, there are fewer than 4 listed companies in China’s Beidou field that are scale-based manufacturers; most enterprises remain in a “small, scattered, weak, churned” state. At the same time, the construction of industry application standards in the Beidou sector is lagging, with issues such as insufficient originality, low industry integration, low level of internationalization, weak intellectual property protection, and a disconnect between technological innovation and standard updates. These problems lead to fragmentation in the application ecosystem, an obvious trend toward homogenization of mass-consumer products, and even trigger “price wars,” further squeezing the survival space of small and micro enterprises and the profit space of R&D-oriented enterprises. This is very unfavorable to the healthy, sustainable development of the industry.

In addition, domestic replacement in the high-end frontier application market is still not thorough. In high-end frontier application areas such as network-precise delay management, unmanned agriculture, global precision aviation and maritime navigation, near-Earth space navigation, and more, international brands still hold a substantial share of the market. Especially in the core algorithms of high-precision GNSS receivers, there is still a gap between some of our products’ positioning stability and reliability in complex environments and international top levels. The stability of boards in dynamic environments is still lower than that of international advanced levels.

With the rapid development of intelligent driving and the low-altitude economy, demand for dynamic scenarios and real-time high-precision positioning and navigation is growing stronger and stronger, but much of the related software is developed by universities and research institutes. Their performance and maturity assessment still need to meet industry and national norms, and update speeds are slow, while supply-chain stability urgently needs to be improved. Improving algorithmic capability is not something that can be done overnight; it requires long-term accumulation and continuous investment.

In terms of talent supply, emerging fields such as the low-altitude economy, autonomous driving, intelligent manufacturing, and intelligent construction have seen a surge in demand for “Beidou+” composite talents, but the existing education and training system has not yet fully caught up. Cross-disciplinary talent that both understands satellite navigation and artificial intelligence, and both hardware and industry applications, remains relatively scarce. I have personally felt this when training graduate students at Wuhan University—under a cultivation model that currently emphasizes academic orientation, students often master only a single technical direction, lacking the perspective and ability to integrate across fields.

Securities Times reporter: GPS still holds dominant status globally. How can Beidou achieve “overtaking by switching lanes”?

Liu Jingnan: Beidou’s future is not about competing with GPS in the “same dimensions,” such as the number of satellites or signal precision. The key lies in opening up a new path that GPS has never walked—achieving “overtaking by switching lanes” through integrated innovation such as “communication, navigation, and remote control as one,” along with “Beidou + 5G + AI.” That is the real direction.

“Communication, navigation, remote control as one” means integrating four capabilities—communication, navigation, remote sensing, and spatiotemporal behavior control—into a single system. Taking the low-altitude economy as an example, a city logistics unmanned aerial vehicle requires navigation, communication, remote sensing, and full-process behavior control. These four needs must be unified and coordinated within the same spatiotemporal framework. Beidou naturally has the genes for “communication, navigation, and remote sensing integration.” The specific frontier directions include two aspects: first, coordinating low-orbit satellite constellations with Beidou to build a “Beidou + low-orbit” coordinated system, enhancing navigation precision with low-orbit assets, expanding communication bandwidth, and carrying remote-sensing observations; second, a unified PNT system across space and ground—integrating satellite navigation with multiple means such as ground 5G base-station positioning, underwater acoustic navigation, indoor micro-base-station positioning, inertial navigation, and others—to form an ubiquitous spatiotemporal service network.

Let Beidou’s starlight illuminate every line of business—what’s needed is to do the big article of regional and industry coordination

Securities Times reporter: The spatiotemporal information industry spans a wide range and serves many sectors, and its growth cannot do without “integration” and “coordination.” How do we do the big article of coordination well?

Liu Jingnan: The spatiotemporal information industry naturally has a wide-area empowerment characteristic. It does not belong to any single industry, yet it empowers every industry. It does not restrict itself to any one region, yet it connects every region.

First, let’s talk about regional coordination. China is vast, and regional resources endowments and industrial foundations vary significantly. Regional coordination should achieve “differentiated positioning, complementary development, and integrated interconnection.” First, leverage regional strengths and avoid homogenized competition. Shenzhen should leverage its advantage in the electronic information industry cluster to build a global R&D and manufacturing center for Beidou chips, modules, and intelligent terminals, while also creating application benchmarks for “Beidou + low-altitude economy.” Wuhan should leverage its dense cluster of universities and research institutions to build an origin point for original theoretical innovation and frontier technologies, as well as a base for training high-end talent; at the same time, relying on the foundation of the automotive industry, it should develop “Beidou + intelligent connected vehicles.” Changsha should focus on “Beidou + intelligent manufacturing + intelligent construction.” Chengdu should focus on Beidou high-precision receivers and aviation navigation equipment. Agricultural provinces and regions such as Heilongjiang and Xinjiang should focus on “Beidou + precision agriculture” and unmanned farms.

Second, build data interconnection and service coordination mechanisms for spatiotemporal information infrastructure across provinces and regions. Efforts should follow the concept of “one national network,” building a national spatiotemporal information service platform with unified data-sharing standards, providing “seamless roaming” spatiotemporal information services for mobile users.

Third, promote sharing of spatiotemporal information infrastructure within cross-regional economic coordination bodies. In regions such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area—if each region builds its own spatiotemporal foundation infrastructure, with non-unified interfaces and data that cannot interoperate, “spatiotemporal fragmentation” will emerge. The Ministry of Natural Resources is taking the lead in promoting the construction of the “one network nationwide,” including establishing data and navigation service sharing mechanisms for regional and industry-affiliated spatiotemporal benchmark networks, supporting “one network connectivity” for cross-domain services for the national low-altitude economy and intelligent driving.

The core of industry coordination is cross-border empowerment of “spatiotemporal +.” First, build industry-coordination “interfaces”—an open spatiotemporal information platform—to reduce barriers to industry access. Second, build “lighthouse cases” in key industries—focusing on sectors such as transportation, emergency management, energy, agriculture, and so on. Third, establish cross-industry coordinated innovation mechanisms—breaking data silos and interest barriers—and build a safe and controllable spatiotemporal data sharing mechanism.

I am already over eighty years old, and I have personally experienced the entire process of the Beidou system being built from nothing to having. Thirty-two years ago, many people questioned: Does China need to develop its own satellite navigation system? Why not just use GPS directly? Today, 32 years later, Beidou has become one of the four global satellite navigation systems recognized by the United Nations, serving users in more than 200 countries and regions worldwide. Facts have proved that the path of independent innovation was the right one—and that it must continue firmly.