In 2003, a decade after the humiliation of the Yinhe incident – when a Chinese container ship was left stranded for weeks after the United States jammed its Global Positioning System (GPS) – Beijing set its sights on bypassing the American satellite network.
At first, it turned to the European Union, pledging €230 million (then US$260 million) to join the Galileo project, an independent satellite navigation system designed to reduce Europe’s reliance on GPS.
But the partnership did not last….