Business as usual. The real question is why the West sits on its hands.
If applied aggressively it would lead to a very large recession or depression, and maybe even war.
The west is in a vastly better position to exploit a trade war with China than China is. Thus, China is more likely to back down when pushed.
Remember, a little give and take keeps players honest. Without that their is not reason for China not to try and bend the rules as much as possible.
There are legitimate security reasons to restrict maps, so this seems unlikely to be something easy to mobilise a larger trade war over.
The sanctions wouldn't have need to be in the exact same area, just ones that would cause equivalent pain.
Just because the Chinese government is stopping Alice from mapping Chinese roads doesn't mean your government should stop Bob from buying Chinese maps. Why should your government punish Bob just because the Chinese government punished Alice? Alice and Bob don't even know each other.
Starting? Begun, the trade war has.
Frankly the world has never had free trade; it's just had freer trade in recent years than in the past. There are constant disputes in the WTO about tariffs, subsidies, and other protectionist measures implemented by western countries as well as China. Free-trade deals reduce barriers to trade in some areas and increase them in others. This mapping situation is just another routine trade dispute.
No, it literally is business. China sells products in the West the value of which derives from there being good mapping data of the West. Banning this same data being collected there is an unfair distortion of the market.
Like, so many people on HN worship "the market" like it matters beyond our tiny, irrelevant life spans, it's horrific.
If I lease my apartment to another person on Airbnb, I am under no obligation to lease my apartment to them or at all.
The fact that we take advantage of their exports does not compel them to do the same.
So, like, don't buy Chinese products taking advantage of Western mapping data, but do so quietly since, you know, they don't have to do anything economically that they don't want to do.
Most educated Western adults were raised in an environment of well-intended anti-racism propaganda, so are unable to think clearly about any topic that involves race in any way.
There is also quite literally nothing racist about it, but you've proven my point quite well (in that you see racism where it doesn't exist, a specific example of the more general point I was making).