China set for quantum leaps in spook-proof communications

China is on track to launch the world’s biggest spook-proof quantum communications system in the next six months, one that could eventually cover Hong Kong, a leading Chinese scientist said on Friday.

Beijing will send the world’s first quantum communications satellite into space in June – around the same time as it aims to put the world’s longest quantum communications network into service, according to Pan Jianwei, the projects’ chief scientist.

On the sidelines of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, Pan said the network would stretch 2,000km from Beijing to Shanghai, and be the largest and most extensive quantum communications system in the world.

Quantum technology is considered to be unbreakable and impossible to hack. It encrypts messages with a key of quantum particles and detects third-party attempts to intercept the particles.

Pan is a physicist and vice-president of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province. His team’s groundbreaking experiment on quantum teleportation was voted the most important breakthrough in the field this year by the London-based Institute of Physics.

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Pan said the country’s leadership had also designated it as a top priority science development project.