China's Alibaba teams up with state-owned arms maker to develop positioning services as Beijing shuns GPS

E-commerce giant Alibaba is bent on developing the country’s home-grown global positioning system for corporations and developers as China continues to wean itself off its dependence on GPS.

Alibaba set up a joint venture called Qianxun Location Network on Tuesday with China North Industries Group (Norinco), a state-owned military group responsible for developing the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), dubbed “China’s GPS”.

Its cloud computing business Aliyun will work on building up the system with data-processing and internet technologies, and Norinco will provide more positioning technology by drawing on its three subsidiaries that offer location-based services,3sNews reported.

The new company has been set up in Shanghai with 2 billion yuan (US$312.6 million) of registered capital. Both partners will hold a 50 per cent share, Norinco said.

BDS is one of the world’s biggest navigation systems, along with American-made GPS, Russia's GLONASS, and Galileo from the European Union. Galileo is not expected to become commercially operational until next year. India is also working on its Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System.