Hopes are high for domestic GPS system

BEIJING - China's car owners are likely to start using a homegrown global positioning system next year, senior space technology experts said at the weekend.

Liu Jingnan, from the Chinese Academy of Engineering who is a specialist in GPS technology, said at a conference in Beijing that the country's own satellite navigation system, Beidou, will start to offer a GPS service aimed at drivers in 2012, according to a Beijing News report on Monday.

It was the first time the Beidou project has been connected with a grassroots civilian use and an alternative to the currently dominant United States GPS navigation system.