It is public knowledge that the United States and China have been having an increasingly worse trade war; however, in the technological aspect it is totally obvious that China has already won the war and what I´m going to tell you now will get you out of any doubt.

The first Chinese coup to the proud American technology industry in the Trump period was who take control of the world’s 5G internet (linked to Google’s problem – Huawei).

And the second one is about GPS technology, which has very important implications for national security and for development and synergies with other technologies like artificial intelligence applied to autonomous vehicles.

Now I will explain the second coup better; however, I want to define 2 concepts first which appear in the title of this article:

What’s BeiDou Satellites?

The BeiDou satellite navigation system is a Chinese satellite navigation system in which the satellites operated by China, Russia and other countries operate.

There are two types of satellite navigation systems in the world:

1) The GPS, which was created in the United States in the 1970s, needs a minimum of 24 satellites in orbit to operate. The accuracy of the satellites’ locations detection only has a margin of error between 5 and 10 meters.

2) BeiDou-1 was created by China in 2000 (the first generation) and BeiDou-2 started operating in China in December 2011 with a partial constellation of 10 satellites in orbit. With the passing of the years, BeiDou’s satellite technology advanced faster than the GPS, It is a technology that through several satellites, a device with a high degree of precision can be located only with a margin of error of centimeters.

The more satellites there are, the greater the accuracy and therefore the most efficient geolocation services.

For this reason, the amount of satellites they have to lead this service is strategic and therefore more countries will join. Here is a chart that counts them:

Here you can see the huge influence of Beidou vs GPS Satellites worldwide:

Why “China 4.0”?

The reason why I put the term “China 4.0” is because the Asian country has two very robust arms as technical bases for the technological development of its industries, these arms are Beidou satellite technology and the 5G internet that Huawei manages.

And why 4.0? Because these incredible technical base I’ve just mention above are developing in the fourth industrial revolution scenario that will boost the following technologies worldwide:

Here is a video that explains about how BeiDou will go global:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPAiR71rIxs

Beidou technology will be compatible with other devices

The growth of the Chinese geolocation industry will have other integrations:

Smartphones: Chinese phone manufacturers (including Huawei) will replace the traditional GPS with the Beidou. Autonomous cars. Chinese car manufacturers will incorporate artificial intelligence technology to integrate with Beidou technology and thus have cars that drive “alone”. Chip manufacturers: Qualcomm was the first to manufacture chips for smartphones that support Beidou technology

But as there are many satellites with Beidou technology, its adaptation in many countries of the world will be automatic.

Conclusions

It seems incredible how GPS was created at the time of the 70’s (which is already almost 50 years old in the market) and has already been surpassed in every way by Beidou technology which is only 19 years old.

On the other hand, it seems obvious to me that most of the world (western and eastern) will end up joining Beidou technology since it will have better integration with the 5G internet that Huawei will provide and also with all the Chinese brand smartphones. I have a feeling that Samsung and Apple will end up doing the same thing in silence.

I know that to the last generations in China, children are taught English as the second language but I think it is necessary to learn the Chinese language because the next great technological development will be centered on China.