At its monthly press conference on September 22, Li Chao, Deputy Director-General of the National Development and Reform Commission’s Policy Research Office and Commission Spokesperson, stated that as a critical national space infrastructure, the Beidou system has gone through technology exploration and scenario-based pilot phases after years of independent research, iterative development and cross-sector empowerment. It is now accelerating toward becoming a new industrial engine featuring large-scale agglomeration, well-rounded ecosystems and economy-wide empowerment.

In 2025, China’s total output value of the Beidou industry exceeded 629 billion yuan. More than 30,000 enterprises and institutions are engaged in the domestic Beidou industry, employing over 2 million people, with its application scenarios and deployment scale continuously expanding.

In the transportation sector, over 12 million commercial vehicles nationwide are equipped with Beidou systems, and highprecision lane-level navigation covers more than 99 % of urban and rural roads, safeguarding safe and convenient travel. In agriculture, more than 3.5 million sets of Beidou terminals are deployed for agricultural machinery assisted driving, farm-operation monitoring and UAV plant-protection operations, accelerating the transformation of traditional agriculture toward smart agriculture. In marine fisheries, 70 000 fishing vessels carry Beidou terminals. Functions including distress alerting, emergency search-and-rescue, dynamic vessel supervision and offshore short-message communication serve as fishermen’s “far-reaching eyes and ears”. The system has helped rescue tens of thousands of people to date.

In the energy sector, Beidou delivers timing accuracy better than 20 nanoseconds. It is widely adopted in wind-farm unit attitude control, mine-slope monitoring, oil-and-gas pipeline inspection and other use-cases, acting as the “temporal heart” for secure and stable power-grid operation.

Beyond empowering numerous industries, Beidou has also entered ordinary households. At present, Beidou positioning services are built into 1.4 billion smartphones, over 50 million electric vehicles, more than 14 million shared bicycles and 160 million wearable devices in China. This forms a comprehensive service framework covering daily mobility and emergency-response scenarios, benefiting hundreds of millions of people.

Meanwhile, Beidou is expanding globally. Its products have been exported to more than 140 countries and regions, deeply integrated into the Belt and Road Initiative. It supplies services such as infrastructure safety monitoring, natural-disaster early-warning and surveying-and-mapping for major projects, bringing lasting benefits across the world.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will uphold the principles of openness and integration, coordinated cooperation, compatibility and complementarity, as well as shared outcomes. The country aims to lift the Beidou industry’s market size above 1 trillion yuan within five years and achieve new breakthroughs in its market-driven industrial-scale application, industrial development and international outreach.

First, strengthen top-level design. China will coordinate research on core technologies including high-end chips, key components and integrated algorithms. It will boost innovation combining Beidou with artificial intelligence, satellite internet and other technologies, optimize the layout of satellite-navigation infrastructure, foster high-quality enterprises, and build a secure and reliable spatiotemporal foundation.

Second, improve institutional safeguards. China will advance the enactment and implementation of the Satellite Navigation Regulations of the People’s Republic of China. It will refine industry standards as well as testing-and-certification systems, encourage broader acceptance of certification results, and complete supporting measures for application services, consolidating the institutional foundation for large-scale Beidou deployment.

Third, deepen open-source collaboration. Leveraging multilateral cooperation mechanisms, China will push forward practical initiatives for technical exchanges, talent development and joint demonstration projects. It will actively participate in global satellite-navigation governance so that Beidou products and services can benefit more countries and populations, and contribute to global economic growth and improved public well-being.