While the West dismantles time transmitters and relies entirely on GPS and the Internet, China not only maintains them in LF (68.5 and 100 kHz) and HF (2.5, 5, 10, and 15 MHz), but is also wiring the country with fiber optics and installing three new LF transmitters in the west of the country.
The stupidity of the western countries will be obvious in an age where GPS can be jammed and conflicts can cut of communications…
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I don’t think it’s the West’s stupidity, but rather preparation for a future totalitarian regime. They want everyone to rely too much on the internet, an infrastructure that is dependent on various companies and the government itself. If things go south, they can easily shut it down or just ask Big Tech to change the algorithms. Also I believe, China is heavily investing in these transmitters to be able to jam anti-CCP broadcasts originating from other countries. There is no good government unfortunately.
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I agree with what you said about governments not being as good as we would like to think… But is quite curious that when is the west that accuses China of surveillance and control the entire world is seeing how authoritarian and fascist loads of western “democracies” are rapidly becoming… 
China for sure is doing it for a reason, but specially on Time Signal stations I don’t see how bad can it be… Specially in a time where almost all the western countries are dismantling their stations and even the “Old” LORAN system is under threat…
I just wonder how safe maritime navigation will become when the GPS system get jammed or simply attacked like what happened recently in the Gulf region…? I’m a bit suspect because I’m a radio tech nerd, but I reckon that putting all the eggs in the same basket might be a bit stupid…
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yeah, i agree. it’s horrible to see the direction europe is taking in recent years and soon china will rule the radio waves and i would not be surprised if uk & eu will restrict the sale of shortwave radios ..
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It’s a pity that we’re squandering our communications resilience by closing broadcast stations.
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Unfortunately when only the economy dictates actions logic disappear… I wonder what will happen when a broad conflict emerges or a huge global disaster happens and people lose electric power or their connection to the Internet…?
It’s a shame that because of the stupid decisions of a few ignorant technocrats entire countries loose their resilience and soft power. The case of my country is that being the official language of millions of people our “neo-liberal” governments decided to end our world wide SW coverage for the entire Portuguese language communities around the world and bet only on global Satellite, Internet and local FM broadcast when only in Africa there are two big countries where the population can’t access power or the internet… And they end it only for cutting costs, apparently the less than 100 people that worked for the National broadcaster where to much of an expense for the state, so they simply slash it… And left millions of people without any radio broadcasts on their official language… One of the consequences is the fact that Mozambique is already thinking on changing their official language to English due the the huge influence from South Africa that has taken over when the Portuguese gave up…
It’s not just about a radio station, geo-politics are the most important consequence of a really bad decision…!
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I’ve been shouting for over 20 years about radio stations putting all of their eggs in one basket by shutting down transmitters and bunging all their programming online. They’re doing it with TV now too - “streaming” 
Oh well. When the internet gets taken out, or restricted - I live in the increasingly authoritative UK, we’ll all pay for the shortsightedness and creeping, sinister surveillance/control of subsequent governments, and for us mugs, i.e. the public, it’ll be way too late.
BBC LW is the latest casualty, closing down about 14 hours ago. What a resource, gone.
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IMHO I think its because its a scare mongering issue because of the recent events between China and the USA not assuming it would be true but the ITU agreement needs to be updated