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China takes this issue seriously because it has government censorship of many kinds of publications, and in international law, maps matter. (A map can indicate

China takes this issue seriously because it has government censorship of many kinds of publications, and in international law, maps matter. (A map can indicate acquiescence to another country's territorial claim, so dictatorships that have territorial disputes with other countries censor maps.) There have been submissions to Hacker News about this issue before, and I have commented on those submissions from this standpoint of international law.[1][2] See also the Reuters news story "China tightens rules on maps amid territorial disputes"[3] (16 December 2015). 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5651456#up_5651804 [3] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-maps-idUSKBN0TZ1AR20151216 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-maps-idUSKBN0TZ1AR20...

steve19 11y ago
This so-called international law is often repeated online, with no evidence that random consumer maps have ever been used to resolve a dispute. 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_farms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_farms

steve19 11y ago

This so-called international law is often repeated online, with no evidence that random consumer maps have ever been used to resolve a dispute. 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_farms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebaa_farms