A new geographic positioning service accurately covering 90 percent of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was launched on Monday, a step analysts said will effectively enhance social stability in Xinjiang's vast urban areas.
The Xinjiang Continuous Operational Reference System (XJ-CORS) consists of 169 base stations and a data center that cover 90 percent of the region. It is the largest system among all of China's provinces and regions, Xinjiang-based news site iyaxin.com reported Tuesday.
Xinjiang has a total area of 1.66 million square kilometers, which accounted for one-sixth of China's territory, and a population of 23.6 million as of 2015.
The new system has enhanced the accuracy of geographic positioning capabilities from within 5 to 10 meters to within nearly 0.5 meters, Liu Bin, head of the Xinjiang Surveying and Mapping Research Institute, told iyaxin.com.
"The accurate real-time positioning data from the XJ-CORS will allow us to monitor the traffic in Xinjiang, including the routes of vehicles carrying dangerous chemicals," Meng Qingwei, an engineer at the institute who took part in the creation of XJ-CORS, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
"Real-time positioning will enable armed police and Special Weapons and Tactics teams to patrol all cities in Xinjiang more effectively, and will do the same for on-site management of police operations," added Meng.
Xu Jianying, a research fellow at the Research Center for Chinese Borderland History and Geography under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times, "We can also undertake operations to safeguard stability across larger areas than we did before, since we are able to capture more geographic information now."
Meng pointed out, however, that the system still has technical limitations. He explained that it is very hard for the system to accurately position people without phone service because XJ-CORS relies on feedback from receivers like mobile phones with GPRS or CDMA services, making the system unlikely to be of use in sparsely populated areas.
But Meng also noted that the system will provide people with more convenience in their daily life.
Local communication, tourism, transportation and mining exploration are also expected to be strengthened by the system, benefits that will eventually boost confidence in the Belt and Road initiative, given Xinjiang's role as a "core zone" along the Silk Road Economic Belt, Xu noted.
