BDS, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System from China

China launches 23rd BeiDou satellite into space - CCTV News - CCTV.com English
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China eyes Silk Road countries for its Beidou satellite system

18 satellites to launch for BDS by 2018

China on Thursday vowed national efforts to complete its Beidou satellite navigation system to serve global users by 2020, with priority going to countries involved in the new Silk Road initiative.

The current goal of developing China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is to "provide basic services to countries along the land and maritime Silk Roads and in neighboring regions by 2018, and to complete the constellation deployment of 35 satellites by 2020 to provide services to global users," said a white paper released Thursday by the State Council Information Office.

A "globalized" BDS would have "positive and practical significance" in terms of connectivity around the globe, especially the interconnection between China and Southeast Asian countries under the Silk Road plan, known as the Belt and Road initiative, Huang Jun, a professor at the School of Aeronautic Science and Engineering at Beihang University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

In line with the Belt and Road initiative, China will jointly build satellite navigation augmentation systems with relevant nations and promote international applications of navigation technologies, the white paper states.

To fulfill the 2018 goal, the country plans to launch some 18 satellites for the BDS by 2018, Ran Chengqi, BDS spokesperson, told a press conference on Thursday.

"In priority Chinese cities such as Beijing and Urumqi in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as well as low latitude countries like Thailand, the BDS is capable of offering a positioning accuracy of better than five meters," said Ran, who is also director of China's Satellite Navigation System Management Office.

Since 2015, the country has sent up seven more satellites into space in support of the BDS, including five navigation satellites and two backup satellites, Ran added, citing Sunday's launch of the BDS' 23rd satellite - a backup satellite - as an example.

In 2020, the BDS might offer different positioning accuracy choices and could provide centimeter-level accuracy under certain requirements, said Lu Weijun, a BDS expert at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

Unique features

Despite being a late starter compared with the US-developed GPS, China's BDS has unique features, Huang said, citing the BDS short-message communication service as an example.

"The short-message communication service is mainly useful in places with insufficient ground and mobile communication capabilities, such as deserts, seas and disaster areas where communication facilities have been destroyed," Lu told the Global Times.

More than 40,000 fishing vessels along China's coastline have been equipped with the BDS application terminals, Ran said, adding that they also provided better communication for islands near the coastline.

The BDS short-message communication service is mainly handled by five Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellites, Lu said. Located above China, the five GEO satellites mainly serve a coverage area of Chinese territories and the Asia-Pacific region" and "could be used to locally enhance the signal in wartime, when other satellites might have been closed."

An independently designed global navigation and positioning network would also contribute to national security, Huang said. Industrial chain

China is developing chips, modules and other basic products based on the BDS and other compatible systems, and fostering an independent BDS industrial chain, the white paper noted.

"By the end of April, the BDS technology has been applied to more than 24 million terminals and over 18 million mobile phones," Ran said.

It is expected that by the end of this year, up to 50 million mobile phones will have been installed with domestic chips that will be compatible with three satellite navigation systems, namely the BDS, GPS and Russia's GLONASS, Wang Hansheng, vice president of Olink Star, a Beijing-based company that makes navigation satellite system products, told the Global Times.

By Ding Xuezhen Source:Global Times

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Smartphones going modular

A near-final prototype of Google’s Project Ara. – Photo : ©Google ATAP

There has been much talk of modular smartphones this spring, after LG released its G5 handset and Google presented a near-final version of its Project Ara.

Modular smartphones differ from regular mobiles thanks to their “building block” design, made up of various interchangeable modules containing different hardware components. These can be switched quickly and easily to boost performance or replace faulty parts.

The current wave of modular smartphones draws on a concept created by a Dutch designer, Dave Hakkens, whose Phonebloks mobile is based on a set of small modules (processor, hard disk, camera, etc.) that can be easily changed and updated.

Once assembled, they form a smartphone with varying levels of performance and functionality, a bit like a desktop PC. As well as making savings for users, a modular design can also help counter planned obsolescence in smartphones.

This idea inspired Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP), who went on to develop Project Ara. Initially presented as a similar project to Phonebloks, comprising almost as many modules as a smartphone has components, the handset evolved, little by little, into a slightly less ambitious prototype presented at the last Google I/O conference in Mountain View, California.

It now takes the form of a smartphone with just six interchangeable modules, including a second display, a camera, memory, a speaker, etc. The screen, processor and RAM are all grouped together in one core block that cannot be modified. A developers’ kit is due to be released in the fall ahead of a planned consumer launch in 2017.

Another smartphone based on the same idea hails from Finland. However, the PuzzlePhone hasn’t been the focus of anywhere near as much media attention as Google’s concept.

This modular mobile only has three interchangeable blocks: one for the display, another for the battery and one main system block housing the processor, memory and camera. It should go on sale before the end of 2016.

The only modular smartphone currently available to buy is the LG G5, unveiled at the 2016 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, back in February.

This handset has a slide-out bottom for changing the battery in just a few seconds. As well as its removable battery, additional interchangeable elements can be added to the phone, such as camera and audio modules. The LG G5 is out now priced at around $650.

Check out Project Ara in this video below:



AFP - RelaxNews

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Dealing with the new abnormal negative interest rate policies with exceptional high debt

Negative rates: ECB president Mario Draghi at the Brussels Economic Forum on Thursday. The ECB and Bank of Japan are already experimenting with negative interest rate policies. – Reuters

HOW can this be normal?

Twenty-nine countries with roughly 60% of the world’s GDP have monetary policy rates of less than 1% per annum. The world is awash with debt, with sovereign, corporate and household debt of over US$230 trillion or roughly three times world GDP.

To finance their large debt and deal with deflation, both the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan are already experimenting with negative interest rate policies (NIRP). If these do not work, look out for helicopter money, which means central bank funding of even larger fiscal deficits.

Either way, at near zero interest rates, the business model of banks, insurers and fund managers are broken. Deutschebank’s CEO has recently warned that European bank profits will struggle more as negative interest rates play into deposit rates. No wonder bank shares are trading below book value.

The problem with the current economic analysis is that no one can ascertain whether exceptionally low interest is a symptom or a cause of deep chronic malaise. Exceptionally high debt burden can only be financed by exceptionally low interest rates. The Fed now feels confident enough to raise interest rates, which means that the US asset bubbles will begin to deflate, spelling trouble to those who borrow too much in US dollars, which would include a number of emerging markets.

As Nomura chief economist Richard Koo asserts, the world has followed Japan into a balance sheet recession, with the corporate sector refusing to invest and consumer/savers too worried about outcomes to spend. The solution to a balance sheet (imbalanced) story is to re-write the balance sheet, which most democratic government cannot do without a financial crisis. 

Like Japan, China’s dilemma is an internal debt issue of left hand owing the right hand, since both countries are net lenders to the world. This means that foreigners cannot trigger a crisis by withdrawing funds. The Chinese national balance sheet is also almost unique because the financial system is largely state-owned lending mostly (about two thirds) to state-owned enterprises or local governments. The Chinese household sector is also lowly geared, with most debt in residential mortgages and even these were bought (until recently) with relatively high equity cushions.

Unlike the US federal government which had a net liability of US$11 trillion or 67% of GDP at the end of 2013, the Chinese central government had net assets of US$4 trillion or 42% of GDP. Chinese local governments had net assets of a further US$11 trillion or 123% of GDP, compared to US local government net assets of 45% of GDP. Local governments hold more assets than central or federal government because most state land and buildings belong to provincial or local authorities.

Thus, unlike the US where households own 95% of net assets in the country, Chinese households own roughly half of national net assets, with the corporate sector (at least half of which is state-owned) owning roughly 30% and the state the balance. In total, the Chinese state owns roughly one-third of the net assets within the country, compared to net 4% for the US federal and state governments.

Sceptics would argue that Chinese statistics are overstated, but even if the Chinese state net assets are halved in value (because land valuation is complicated), there would be at least US$7.5 trillion of state net assets (net of liabilities) or 82% of GDP to deal with any contingencies.

Furthermore, unlike the Fed, ECB or Bank of Japan, the People’s Bank of China derives its monetary power mostly from very high levels of statutory reserves on the banking system, which is equivalent to forced savings to finance its foreign exchange reserves of US$3.2 trillion. Thus, the central bank has more room than other central banks to deal with domestic liquidity issues.

What can be done with this high level of state net assets, which is in essence public wealth? My crude estimate is that if the rate of return on such assets can be improved by 1% under professional management, GDP could be increased by at least 1.5 percentage points (1% on 165% of GDP of net state assets).

How can this re-writing of the balance sheet be achieved? There are two possibilities. One is to allow local governments to use their net assets to deleverage their own local government debt and their own state-owned enterprise debt. This could be achieved through professionally managed provincial level asset management/debt restructuring companies.

The second method is inject some of the state net assets into the national and provincial social security funds as a form of returning state assets to the public. People tend to forget that other than the painful restructuring of state-owned enterprises in the late 1990s, which led to the creation of China’s global supply chain, the single largest measure to create Chinese household wealth was the selling of residential property at below market prices to civil servants.

The size of the wealth transfer was never officially calculated, but it paved the way for boosting of domestic consumption by giving many households the beginnings of household security.

The injection of state assets into national and social security funds was not achieved in the 1990s, because the state of provincial social security fund accounting was not ready. But if China wants to boost domestic consumption and improve healthcare and social security, now is the time to use state assets to inject into such funds.

At the end of 2014, Chinese social security fund assets amounted to 4 trillion yuan, compared with central government net assets of 27 trillion yuan (Chinese Academy of Social Science data, 2015). Hence, the injection of state assets (including injection by provincial and local government) into social security funds as a form of stimulus to domestic consumption and more professional management of public wealth is clearly an affordable policy option.

In sum, at the individual borrower level, there is no doubt an ever increasing leverage ratio in China is not sustainable. But the big picture situation is manageable. If the policy objective is to improve overall productivity (and GDP growth) by improving the output of public assets, the timing is now.

By Tan Sri Andrew Sheng who is Distinguished Fellow, Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong.


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