The cooperation between the European Union and the Peoples' Republic of China, India and perhaps others in Asia in a major programme of collaboration in the next generation of Global Positioning Satellites has the potential for far-reaching consequences in the fields of political, strategic, economic, industrial and technology relations. The accords represent a quantitative and qualitative leap for both Europe and its Asian partners in their developing industrial and technological collaboration in this key sector. It involves a ?200 million contribution by China to the planned European Galileo satellite navigation system and a comparable accord between the EU and India that should create a system autonomous and competitive with the US monopoly Global Positioning System, with its potentially unreliable military priority orientation. The collaboration, that includes a specific aerospace collaboration centre in Beijing, could also serve as the genesis for development of higher capabilities in bilateral, trilateral or individual participants. The orientation of this cooperation based on the Galileo system is primarily civilian-orientated and of considerable advantage to the entire transport sector and to aerospace in general. Both China and India in recent months have indicated ambitious plans for their participation in the aerospace field and begun to display some of their acquired capability, which the cooperation with the EU could expand. In recent months, the EU has enlarged its list of partners to include Israel and has indicated it is seeking similar arrangements with Japan, Russia and others. And it has signed an agreement with the US on technical compatibility of the two systems. This paper will cover the current details of this European-Asian collaboration and its future implications, including their possible impact on the delicate strategic and security environment in Asia.
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