China's own satellite navigation system

The system, called "Beidou", will include five geostationary Earth orbit satellites and 30 medium Earth orbit satellites
Beijing, China, 3 November 2006 - China has announced plans to build a satellite navigation system that will include up to 35 satellites and be working in the Asian region by 2008. The system, called "Beidou", will include five geostationary Earth orbit satellites and 30 medium Earth orbit satellites, Xinhua news agency said on November 2.

There will be two services from it, free service for mass, and licensed service for military. Navigation services open to commercial customers will provide users with positioning accuracy within 10 meters (33 feet), velocity accuracy within 0.2 meters per second and timing accuracy within 50 nanoseconds, the report said. No details on the costs of the system were reported.

It was also not clear how the Chinese system would rival the USA’s global positioning satellite system or the EU's Galileo satellite navigational system, which is expected to be built with Chinese participation.

China would launch two "Compass" navigation satellites next year as part of the Beidou project, Xinhua said. The system is expected to cover China and parts of neighbouring countries by 2008, before being expanded into a global network of satellites, it said.

China is willing to cooperate with other countries in developing its satellite navigation industry to allow the Compass system to operate with other global satellite positioning systems, the report said.

China has already joined the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency's 3.5 billion-euro Galileo Project to develop a satellite-navigation system independent of the US military global positioning system (GPS) monopoly.

Source : http://www.chinadaily.com.cn