China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps
citylab.com
citylab.com
"There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan."
"You know Taiwan is really not that big." she said.
"What do you mean?"
"Map makers show it larger than it really is in order to exaggerate its importance."
I was a little weirded out by that idea. This girl was pretty intelligent, she seemed to know some math and logical thinking. She was in the process of becoming a CPA.
For better or worse I responded with practical analysis: "How would that even work? You and I could go buy maps right now for navigating ships and airplanes, those would have to be accurate in order to function. We could compare them to this one and if they are noticeably different we could complain and the company that made the map would lose face. Why would Rand-McNally give a shit about the political importance of Taiwan anyway, enough to risk their own credibility?"
"They just do. All map makers do this."
She would not be convinced.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartograph... http://thetruesize.com/
I went to the University of Washington, at which an extremely high percentage of the students were Chinese (I want to say between 30% and 40%). Taiwan and the South China Sea are definite hotbutton issues. Once during an international relations lecture of about 200 people, the professor made the mistake of mentioning Taiwan which caused one of the Chinese students to stand up and begin talking very loudly (shouting?) at the professor for what must have been a good three minutes, informing him that Taiwan is not the real China. It was pretty painful to watch considering he was one of the most senior professors within that department, and very well versed on the subject.
Then I also had a Chinese roommate freshman year and there were always oddities like "those people at Tiananmen had it coming." Lots of little things that added up over time.
http://www.washington.edu/omad/files/2015/02/2015-01-09-UW-S...
So they (Asians, other) are at 21.5% in 2014/15. Note that international has its own separate slice, at 14.7%, that isn't broken down. So...that means all that 21.5% are American, possibly of Chinese descent, which is far away from Chinese nationals.
UW is a commuter school, I think 75% of the students live at home even. So if you were living on campus, your view of the demographics would be a bit skewed. Incidentally, in 2013, UW admitted a class of 6,255, 687 of which were Chinese, roughly 10%, which still isn't shabby:
http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/10/14/uw-fall-2013-enrol...
(everything else that's far from the map center is of course also affected this way)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/google-maps-get...
So there is at least some truth to what she said
You too probably have pollution like that in your head - and so do I - and just like this person we are unable to recognize it for what it is. Objectivity is very precious and extremely hard to find.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
You're both right! It uses reversible randomness apparently. Wonder how hard the algorithm and seed(s) are to figure out
Yeah, we have a word for that: encryption
There are now many OSS-tools that convert between the global coordinate system standard (WGS-84) and the Chinese deliberately incompatible coordinate systems (GCJ-02 and BD-09).
There is a "ghost" trail a few meters to the east of the real trail.
It's presumably just typical government inertia at this point... Everyone using maps within China gets accurate maps so not worth the trouble of trying to change the policy.
In countries that are not dictatorships, national officials may announce that they refuse to accept certain territorial claims, and simply make sure that officially published maps support the country's view of territorial claims. That can include a country publishing maps that say "boundary representations are not necessarily authoritative" when the country's government has no settled opinion on territorial disputes regarded by other countries. If you have access to maps published by a variety of official and nonofficial publishers, you can compare for yourself how different publishers treat the issue of territorial claims in the South China Sea (the example that is prominent in today's article) or in the border region of Nicaragua and Costa Rica (the earlier example cited below) or in Palestine (the later example cited below). You could also look up Kashmir on a lot of different maps and look for border details on those maps.
[1] 1387 days ago, comments to submission "The First Google Maps War" from the opinion page of the New York Times:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3645784#up_3645845
[2] 958 days ago, comments to submission "Google changes Palestinian location from 'Territories' to 'Palestine' from the BBC:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5651456#up_5651804
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-maps-idUSKBN0TZ1AR20...
If official government maps shows a certain boundary it is evidence that the government at some point in time accepted that as fact (or pretended to accept it as fact).
Consumer maps are probably meaningless unless the government or local officials were using them and they had no official maps to contradict the unofficial consumer maps. I vaguely recall some embarrassment in India where officials were using unsanctioned maps (but I can't find a link).
As far as I can tell consumer maps (not used by officials) have never been used in an international court to prove a boundary. They can be, at worst, propaganda. There is not, as far as I can tell, any UN or other international treaty which mandate that any rabdom map is evidence of boundaries.
In the Shebaa farms dispute, for example, Israel and UN officials cited official Lebanese military maps as evidence [0].
tldr; It is enough for China to police official government maps and the use of maps by officials, without confiscating maps tourists bring in ... unless it's all about propaganda to support spurious claims, which of course it is.
When entering the country the first "forbidden" item listed on the customs form isn't drugs or other illegal things, it's "Maps and literature where Indian external boundaries have been shown incorrectly".
Of course, I doubt they enforce that, especially since anyone with a phone who has opened Google/Bing/Apple Maps while in a different country probably has the "incorrect" boundaries cached on their phone when they enter.
(we have some border disputes with Pakistan and China)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/news/hide-the-guide-warns-lone...
On the other hand, it's not like it was grounds for paranoia either: that was usually a good conversation starter on the train. There's a wide disconnect between what the government says it will enforce, what it actually enforces, and what people actually think.
You could get into some weird conversations, but I generally did not come across much animosity because of these maps. Awkwardness, at worst. If there was any, you'd simply back out and apologize for the map being inaccurate.
Secondly, for every hostile Chinese policy, there must be someone benefited. Local Chinese internet giants are actively exploiting every possible way to lobby policies for their own good. US capitals can deploy lobby operations via VIE.
Finally, the thing that troubles me is that after all these years, Google is making a coming back to China[1], I mean wtf? seriously? Many hardcore Google fans in China a disguised by this awful act.
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/4/9262479/google-china-app-st...
You sure it was that, and not China trying repeatedly (and successfully) stealing Google's source code? (Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/china-google-idUSN03258738201...)
And then hacking Google again to commit corporate espionage and steal U.S industrial secrets? (Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/security-experts-china...) Or any number of other attacks, backstabbing or a lack of cooperation from China's government?
Google left China because it just wasn't worth it to them to do business there anymore. Especially when your own research into the security breach shows the host country's government is facilitating the attacks on your company. I'd leave too... Then again, I wouldn't have been there in the first place.
> the attacks were "orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally
This is the aftermath.
If you mean they have unfair advantage, you can compare jd.com with amazon.cn.