China launched a new satellite on Wednesday as a part of Beidou, to reduce the dependence of the U.S GPS. Beidou, which is China's indigenous satellite navigation and positioning network, had been started in 2000, to curb the Chinese dependence on GPS. This system will provide SMS and time services and also satellite navigation in the Asia-Pacific region by 2012 and world wide services will be launched by the year 2020, as a Chinese answer to GPS. The Beidou-1 system which was launched with the primary aim of cutting down dependence on GPS, did not fulfil that particular purpose but proved to be very useful for communication during the earthquake in May 2008. The Beidou-2 system, which will consist of a total of 35 satellites, was developed to set up a better regional and global navigation system, which will eventually lessen the dependence on GPS.