Building up national Earth observing system in China

Remote sensing in China began in the 1970s, and has undergone several distinct periods of its history from the initial introduction, the early experimentation, to the present innovative development phase. This paper presents an overview of significant achievements in the effort of building the national Earth observing system in China, which includes spaceborne and airborne Earth observing systems, and remote sensing ground satellite receiving station networks. By far, the system has played an important role in many application fields.