AT A RECENT NEWS conference, the spokesperson for Beidou Navigation Satellite System said that it has been rendering a service to the Asia-Pacific region since 2012, and it has been performing better for the past three years. However, Beidou needs deeper international cooperation in order to prosper, says Beijing Youth Daily:

The Global Positioning System of the United States has long been dominant in the global navigation market. However, there is no free lunch and no nation can afford to rely on the US for its own navigation.

That's why many countries, the US' allies included, have been trying to escape from their reliance upon GPS. Russia has its Glonass, Europe has its Galileo, and China has Beidou.