The new space race is heating up, with the United States warning that its major rival China is narrowing the gap as it makes rapid technology gains.
While China says its ambitious plans remain peaceful and that it rejects the weaponisation of space, some of the technologies it has developed in recent years also have military uses. Here are some of them.
BeiDou network
The Chinese navigation satellite system provides positioning, navigation and timing services worldwide.
Its network of 60 satellites has been in full global operation since 2020, with the final backup satellites launched in 2024.
BeiDou – a symbol of China’s growing tech self-sufficiency – aims to challenge the dominance of GPS, the global positioning system run by the US military, especially in Belt and Road Initiative countries.
Besides its civilian applications, BeiDou provides navigation and positioning services to all branches of the Chinese military with even higher precision in the Asia-Pacific than GPS offers the US military. That enables independent guidance for Chinese missiles, bombs and other precision munitions, with high accuracy. The People’s Liberation Army can also use BeiDou’s short messaging function to communicate.
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