III. Developing and Expanding Space Application Industry
To serve the economy and society, China has promoted public and commercial application of its satellites and space technology, growing the industry towards greater efficiency.
1. Boosting Public Services with Satellites
The service capacity of satellite applications has markedly improved. The significant role of satellites is seen in the protection of resources and the eco-environment, disaster prevention and mitigation, management of emergencies, weather forecasting and climate change response, and also felt in social management and public services, urbanization, coordinated regional development, and poverty eradication. The space industry helps to improve people's lives.
The satellite remote-sensing system has been used by almost all departments at national and provincial levels to conduct emergency monitoring of over 100 major and catastrophic natural disasters around the country. It provides services to tens of thousands of domestic users and over 100 countries, having distributed over 100 million scenes of data.
The communications and broadcasting satellite network has made direct services available to over 140 million households in China's rural and remote areas, provided returned data for over 500 mobile phone base stations, and ensured efficient emergency communications during the responses to the forest fire in Liangshan, Sichuan province, to the heavy rainstorm in Zhengzhou, Henan province and to other major disaster relief work.
The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System has guaranteed the safety of over seven million operating vehicles, provided positioning and short message communication services to over 40,000 seagoing fishing vessels, and offered precise positioning services for the freighting of supplies and tracking of individual movement for Covid-19 control, and for hospital construction.
In the next five years, under the overarching goal of building a safe, healthy, beautiful and digital China, we will intensify the integration of satellite application with the development of industries and regions, and space information with new-generation information technology such as big data and Internet of Things. We will also extend the integrated application of remote-sensing satellite data on land, ocean and meteorology, advance the construction of infrastructure for integrated application of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, satellite communications, and the ground communications network, and improve our capacity to tailor and refine professional services. All these efforts will help to achieve the goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality, to revitalize rural areas, and to realize new-type urbanization, coordinated development between regions and eco-environmental progress.
2. Space Application Industry
The commercial use of satellite technology is thriving, which expands the applications market for governments, enterprises and individuals. A group of competitive commercial space enterprises are emerging and realizing industrialized large-scale operation. A variety of products and services such as high-accuracy maps using remote-sensing data, full dimensional images, data processing, and application software are improving the service to users in transport, e-commerce, trading of agricultural products, assessment of disaster losses and insurance claims, and the registration of real estate.
The ability to commercialize satellite communications and broadcasting services has further improved. Four 4K Ultra HD television channels in China were launched and TV viewers now have access to over 100 HD channels. Internet access is also available on board ocean vessels and passenger aircraft. Tiantong-1, a satellite mobile communication system, is in commercial operation.
The satellite navigation industry has witnessed rapid growth as evidenced by sales of over 100 million chips compatible with the BeiDou system. Its industrial applications have been widely introduced into mass consumption, the sharing economy, and daily life. Achievements in space technology have helped traditional industries transform and upgrade, supported emerging industries such as new energy, new materials and environmental protection, enabled new business models such as smart cities, smart agriculture and unmanned driving to grow, making a great contribution to building China's strengths in science and technology, manufacturing, cyberspace and transport.
In the next five years, China's space industry will seize the opportunities presented by the expanding digital industry and the digital transformation of traditional industries, to promote the application and transfer of space technology. Through innovative business models and the deep integration of space application with digital economy, more efforts will be made to expand and extend the scope for applying satellite remote-sensing and satellite communications technologies, and realizing the industrialized operation of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. This will provide more advanced, economical, high-quality products and convenient services for all industries and sectors and for mass consumption. New business models for upscaling the space economy such as travel, biomedicine, debris removal and experiment services will be developed to expand the industry.
