23 ms·

China Blocks Foreign Companies from Mapping Its Roads for Self-Driving Cars

128 points by ourmandave 9y ago

bkor 9y ago
The title implies a bit more than what the article says. Basically China doesn't like their country to be mapped. As a result supposedly it's pretty difficult to use most navigation software (e.g. Google Maps) within China. China is NOT blocking it because it is self-driving (which is what you might assume). China blocks pretty much any mapping. I haven't been to China btw; I'm curious if OpenStreetMap would work.
- runj__ 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    As I have occasionally worked with geodetic coordinate conversions in the past, that GCJ-02 datum sounds like an incredibly bad idea. The worst accidental mistake I have ever made with respect to geodetic coordinates, relating to accumulating floating-point round-off errors, absolutely pales in comparison to the sheer idiocy of introducing errors into your geodetic datum on purpose. Look, people, satellite photography exists now. That objective reality maps really well onto a coordinate systems based on a smooth ellipsoid. If you intentionally make your domestically-produced map products harder to use for people in your own country, they will buy better maps from other countries. If your goal is to make your 50 most important military assets harder to find, and in the process make it harder to find a billion civilian assets, you're going to lose more money just paying all those delivery drivers to get lost for 20 minutes than it would cost to rebuild those 50 military assets 10 times over.
- greggman 9y ago
  I don't think its that simple and I'm curious what's really up. I was just in Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou for a week. I purchased a Hong Kong sim for my phone. Google and Facebook were not blocked when using tbat sim but they were blocked on hotel WiFi. So then trying Google Maps the location was always wrong. So wrong as to be unusable. But, trying Apple Maps it was always correct. It seems like that could only happen by regulation not technical means. The iPhone itself isn't going to give different GPS info depending on which app is running is it ? Which seems to means Google Maps' location is wrong because the Chinese government told Google to make it wrong?
  - larrysalibra 9y ago
    Google Maps are intentionally offset in China to comply with regulations because the global version doesn't have a license to operate in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_Chi... Apple Maps in China uses Autonavi maps which are licensed by the Chinese government. Note that these maps are different than the maps seen in Apple Maps outside of Mainland China. Google and Facebook weren't blocked using your Hong Kong sim because roaming sims tunnel data out of the country and connect to the internet there (like a vpn!).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - prewett 9y ago
    In the past, ditu.google.cn (only accessible within mainland China, I believe) un-offset the data. I don't know if that is still available.
- gigo2017 9y ago
  Agree. Misleading title. It is not specific to China, by the way. South Korea doesn't like that either. Think of it as a privilege, not a right, just like driving. https://www.voanews.com/a/google-maps-data-south-korea/3602188.html https://www.voanews.com/a/google-maps-data-south-korea/36021...
- rmc 9y ago
  China is on OSM. There is only a measley 383MB of map data though, about the same level of detail as Sweden. http://download.geofabrik.de/asia/china.html http://download.geofabrik.de/asia/china.html
- mikeash 9y ago
  I’ve used Maps.me (which uses OSM) with great success in China.
- taoistextremist 9y ago
  Correction: They block pretty much any mapping not done by Chinese companies. I could navigate around hutongs (old windy neighborhoods which aren't always easily mapped) with QQ Maps without a problem.
gaius 9y ago
Business as usual. The real question is why the West sits on its hands.
- SteveGregory 9y ago
  What kind of response would you like to see from the West?
  - Retric 9y ago
    Tit for tat tends to work really well. 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.
    - it_learnses 9y ago
      Yep. We just need to unite major players such as USA, Canada, Japan, India, Australia who are being threatened by Chinese practices and declare a trade war. Sanction the hell out of them to make them realize that their govt can't bully the rest of the world population.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    Maybe something like the TPP without all the corporatist nonsense included.
  - gaius 9y ago
    No mapping, no access to our markets for anything mapping related. Fair's fair!
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      Are there enough Chinese companies doing mapping related things for this to be relevant? There are legitimate security reasons to restrict maps, so this seems unlikely to be something easy to mobilise a larger trade war over.
3pt14159 9y ago
If anyone has specific knowledge of specifics of self-driving cars I'm working on an article and would love to bounce some questions off of you. My email and GPG key are in my profile.
SurrealSoul 9y ago
I wonder how much of a cost the Autonavi license cost and if companies that are starting the self-driving cars may be stifled in china for these licenses
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
cohnnton 9y ago
This is a typical China behavior: lie to WTO about how open its economy is, then openly disregard the repriprocity with other countries and block foreign companies from competing. Thank goodness other countries are waking up: "The United States, European Union and Japan vowed on Tuesday to work together to fight market-distorting trade practices and policies that have fueled excess production capacity, naming several key features of China’s economic system." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto/u-s-eu-japan-slam-market-distortion-in-swipe-at-china-idUSKBN1E62HA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto/u-s-eu-japan-sl... "US formally opposes China market economy status at WTO" https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-formally-opposes-china-market-economy-status-at-wto.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-formally-opposes-china-ma... "TRUMP STARTS NEW WAR AGAINST CHINA OVER 'ECONOMIC AGGRESSION'" http://www.newsweek.com/trump-starts-new-war-against-china-over-economic-aggression-750502 http://www.newsweek.com/trump-starts-new-war-against-china-o...
- nemesisj 9y ago
  This type of negative opinion on China is shared all too often on HN, and it's really irritating. It's also untrue. For example, lets go to the WTO itself and see the list of current disputes, which is helpfully grouped by country: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_country_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_countr... - China is currently responding to 39 complaints. - The USA is responding to 132. Which is more than the entire EU (84) and more than any other country. It's really tiring to see the "China is a protectionist market" narrative trotted out again and again, unchallenged, and is probably second only to the "China is encroaching on the South China sea" narrative in terms of how hypocritical both views are, especially when espoused by Americans.
  - michaelscott 9y ago
    I'm not sure I understand.. are you saying that China is NOT a protectionist market? There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. It's true that such a view doesn't disregard the often equally protectionist approaches of countries like the US, yes, but the former can't be denied just because of the latter.
  - 9y ago
xen2xen1 9y ago
Reminds me of how the Soviets supposedly bought different sized rail cars than Europe so that it was harder to invade. Sounds more like a military protectionist measure than an economic one.
- walshemj 9y ago
  No it was a holdover from the tsarist days when Russia stdardised on a different gauge
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  If you take a train from Beijing to Moscow, there is a gauge switch for the cars once you hit Mongolia (they literally lift the cars up and switch the wheels).
foodislove 9y ago
Protectionism with Chinese Characteristics It's a pretty common tactic. Cite "national security" or any other vaguely plausible reason to deny access to non-favored firms (foreign companies, and local companies who don't have the "connections"). If anyone complains, government spokesperson and 50 cent mafia generate lots of angry nationalistic crying. If another country retaliates, same spokesperson and 50 cent mafia will then decry with a straight face how hypocritical "democracies" are and how great Xi Jinping is. The game plan is simple. Buy and/or steal tech. Rebadge as Chinese, then bankrupt the original creators by leveraging government subsidies and underpaid workers ie Segway.
- paradite 9y ago
  US and EU have in the past blocked several Chinese companies (ZTE, Huawei, etc) for national security reasons as well. Would you classify them as protectionism? If yes, then why are you complaining? If not, then why are you applying double standards here?
  - pas 9y ago
    Why not judge the concerns on their own merit? Blocking a chip or other technology that's hard to vet is one thing. Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and public satellites? Does not really makes sense. Now, of course these cases can and should be compared, but so far it seems that citing national security issues in one case seems to be pretty baseless excuse, whereas in the other case it seems to have some merit, even if the actual ban of Chinese sourced components is ridiculous, because a lot of other things are sourced/imported from China with the same or more severe espionage potential.
    - justicezyx 9y ago
      > Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and public satellites? Does not really makes sense. Then no one needs to map the road anyway, why bother?
      - 9y ago
dis-sys 9y ago
Is there any international law or treaty explicitly requiring countries to allow their roads to be mapped by foreign countries/companies?
- juanmirocks 9y ago
  No. But the agreements of the WTO support the equal treatment for every company anywhere. The Chinese government only permits its own Chinese companies to profit, while block basically all foreign ones.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Common sense, perhaps? Large militaries will create their own up-to-date maps for every region of the world where they could possibly expect to be operating. They will, of course, keep strategic details in such maps secret, but with a bit of marginal effort, the maps deemed to have low military relevance can also be sold to civilians for their business purposes. In order to keep a location secret now, it can't be visible from space. And it can't have surface roads leading to it, or even change the surface significantly from historic aerial photographs of the same location. And it definitely can't have radio signals coming out of it. That basically means tunnels and submarines. There exist people whose jobs are to stare at satellite images all day, classify them, and draw shapes into a database. There is no longer any credible military rationale for restricting by law the creation of surface maps.
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    It eats up foreign military budgets.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Those militaries can't trust your civil maps anyway, no matter how accurate they may be in the parts where people actually use them. It's not like you're going to have that featureless black square labeled as "ICBM silo" instead of "dairy barn".
yingliu4203 9y ago
It's a big surprise to me for a while that China Government blocks so many U.S. internet services but no complaints from the U.S. government what only complaints on old-type of unfair trading: steel, consumer goods, solar panels etc. The digital economy is much a bigger deal.
- majormajor 9y ago
  > The digital economy is much a bigger deal. Is it really? Or would it all be compressible if someone else had complete control over your manufacturing and hardware supply chain? Strategically I think China having a bigger Amazon competitor than anyone else pales in its relevance to the US compared to US infrastructure relying on Chinese-produced components.
saosebastiao 9y ago
This is the sore spot economists often have with anti-trade politics. Recap: people tend to only think of the benefits of trade in the money they make from trade, and not the products or ideas that they get when other countries make money from us. There are benefits to both buying from and selling to other countries, and by only considering one side, we make decisions that make us poorer. China doesn't want foreign companies making money from Chinese maps in China. As a result, Chinese firms may make a tiny bit more money, but one billion people have drastically worse maps.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  > but one billion people have drastically worse maps. This is something that the Chinese government demonstrably does not care about. They even mandate that an obfuscated coordinate system be used by GPS units and maps in China.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Economists often understate the value (especially to government and powerful connected folks) of stability and control while focusing on things like "massive number of people with objectively worse maps." The potential-foreign-influenced-insurrection-to-better-maps exhange rate is tough to pin down. ;)
juanmirocks 9y ago
The leading position of China in AI and Quatum technology is very worrying. We must adapt. AI: https://www.ft.com/content/856753d6-8d31-11e7-a352-e46f43c5825d https://www.ft.com/content/856753d6-8d31-11e7-a352-e46f43c58... Quantum tech: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/china-successfully-demonstrates-quantum-encryption-by-hosting-a-video-call https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/china-s...
ChuckMcM 9y ago
They are not wrong, in that detailed maps of streets can reveal more than simply how to drive around. The combination of both detailed maps and vehicle flow is even more telling in terms of economics and other activities. It will be interesting to watch the ramifications of this sort of policy. As China moves to become a leading economy with a high level of technology distributed throughout the country, it will become harder to control communications and information dispersal. Historically information access has been anathema to their style of governing and I can't see how they can have both.
- dsl 9y ago
  The first film based government satellite imagery was 0.3 m/pixel, in the 1960s. It has only gotten better since then. (For comparison you can buy GeoEye 1 data today commercially at 0.41 m/pixel) We also regularly fly stealth collection aircraft over Chinese airspace. At this point all the strategic things an invading army worries about (bridge heights, strength of roads, width between buildings for turning tanks, etc) can be obtained easily from overhead reconnaissance. Hedge funds have been flying satellites to collect economic indicators (traffic flow in retail spaces, fill levels in oil storage tanks, number of ships in port, etc) since the '90s.
  - taobility 9y ago
    I believe you are live in Silicon Valley. You remind me a story from Billions that how local people fool the Wall Street traders or Hedge funds you described to estimate the factory's outcome by just those Satellite photos. If you believe Satellite photos are enough, why the article still complain Chinese government's behavior.
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    I think you might be mis-remembering the history of satellite surveillance. In the 60's you would be lucky if you got 3 meters per pixel (see https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/declass_1 https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/declass_1 for additional details) That said, there have been claims of 0.1 m GSD satellites[1]. That said, satellites cannot read street signs or business names or capture WiFi hotspots or measure mean traffic density. Things that 'streetview' cars do all the time in order to create a better navigation experience. That information may or may not be interesting to the military but I can imagine ways that it would be interesting to business and finance and enforcement folks. It is perhaps opportunities for that sort of scrutiny that is unwelcome? [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-image-resolution-keeps-improving-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-image-resolution-ke...
bluthru 9y ago
Ugh, I really wish everyone contributed to OpenStreetMap and shared its dataset. I don't want map accuracy to be a competitive advantage.
jxramos 9y ago
For some reason this makes me think about that time I read that Russia installed wider train tracks to prevent trains from other countries from slipping in and entering the country.
drwu 9y ago
To be fair, mapping and geo measuring were forbidden in China even before self driving becoming a popular topic. Not only the foreign companies, even a lot of chinese companies are still not allowed to do such measurements. It was rather a military decision than an economic one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...

128 points by ourmandave 9y ago

bkor 9y ago

The title implies a bit more than what the article says. Basically China doesn't like their country to be mapped. As a result supposedly it's pretty difficult to use most navigation software (e.g. Google Maps) within China. China is NOT blocking it because it is self-driving (which is what you might assume). China blocks pretty much any mapping. I haven't been to China btw; I'm curious if OpenStreetMap would work.

runj__ 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  As I have occasionally worked with geodetic coordinate conversions in the past, that GCJ-02 datum sounds like an incredibly bad idea. The worst accidental mistake I have ever made with respect to geodetic coordinates, relating to accumulating floating-point round-off errors, absolutely pales in comparison to the sheer idiocy of introducing errors into your geodetic datum on purpose. Look, people, satellite photography exists now. That objective reality maps really well onto a coordinate systems based on a smooth ellipsoid. If you intentionally make your domestically-produced map products harder to use for people in your own country, they will buy better maps from other countries. If your goal is to make your 50 most important military assets harder to find, and in the process make it harder to find a billion civilian assets, you're going to lose more money just paying all those delivery drivers to get lost for 20 minutes than it would cost to rebuild those 50 military assets 10 times over.
greggman 9y ago
I don't think its that simple and I'm curious what's really up. I was just in Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou for a week. I purchased a Hong Kong sim for my phone. Google and Facebook were not blocked when using tbat sim but they were blocked on hotel WiFi. So then trying Google Maps the location was always wrong. So wrong as to be unusable. But, trying Apple Maps it was always correct. It seems like that could only happen by regulation not technical means. The iPhone itself isn't going to give different GPS info depending on which app is running is it ? Which seems to means Google Maps' location is wrong because the Chinese government told Google to make it wrong?
- larrysalibra 9y ago
  Google Maps are intentionally offset in China to comply with regulations because the global version doesn't have a license to operate in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_Chi... Apple Maps in China uses Autonavi maps which are licensed by the Chinese government. Note that these maps are different than the maps seen in Apple Maps outside of Mainland China. Google and Facebook weren't blocked using your Hong Kong sim because roaming sims tunnel data out of the country and connect to the internet there (like a vpn!).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- prewett 9y ago
  In the past, ditu.google.cn (only accessible within mainland China, I believe) un-offset the data. I don't know if that is still available.
gigo2017 9y ago
Agree. Misleading title. It is not specific to China, by the way. South Korea doesn't like that either. Think of it as a privilege, not a right, just like driving. https://www.voanews.com/a/google-maps-data-south-korea/3602188.html https://www.voanews.com/a/google-maps-data-south-korea/36021...
rmc 9y ago
China is on OSM. There is only a measley 383MB of map data though, about the same level of detail as Sweden. http://download.geofabrik.de/asia/china.html http://download.geofabrik.de/asia/china.html
mikeash 9y ago
I’ve used Maps.me (which uses OSM) with great success in China.
taoistextremist 9y ago
Correction: They block pretty much any mapping not done by Chinese companies. I could navigate around hutongs (old windy neighborhoods which aren't always easily mapped) with QQ Maps without a problem.

gaius 9y ago

Business as usual. The real question is why the West sits on its hands.

SteveGregory 9y ago
What kind of response would you like to see from the West?
- Retric 9y ago
  Tit for tat tends to work really well. 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.
  - it_learnses 9y ago
    Yep. We just need to unite major players such as USA, Canada, Japan, India, Australia who are being threatened by Chinese practices and declare a trade war. Sanction the hell out of them to make them realize that their govt can't bully the rest of the world population.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  Maybe something like the TPP without all the corporatist nonsense included.
- gaius 9y ago
  No mapping, no access to our markets for anything mapping related. Fair's fair!
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Are there enough Chinese companies doing mapping related things for this to be relevant? There are legitimate security reasons to restrict maps, so this seems unlikely to be something easy to mobilise a larger trade war over.

3pt14159 9y ago

If anyone has specific knowledge of specifics of self-driving cars I'm working on an article and would love to bounce some questions off of you. My email and GPG key are in my profile.

SurrealSoul 9y ago

I wonder how much of a cost the Autonavi license cost and if companies that are starting the self-driving cars may be stifled in china for these licenses

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

cohnnton 9y ago

This is a typical China behavior: lie to WTO about how open its economy is, then openly disregard the repriprocity with other countries and block foreign companies from competing. Thank goodness other countries are waking up: "The United States, European Union and Japan vowed on Tuesday to work together to fight market-distorting trade practices and policies that have fueled excess production capacity, naming several key features of China’s economic system." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto/u-s-eu-japan-slam-market-distortion-in-swipe-at-china-idUSKBN1E62HA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto/u-s-eu-japan-sl... "US formally opposes China market economy status at WTO" https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-formally-opposes-china-market-economy-status-at-wto.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-formally-opposes-china-ma... "TRUMP STARTS NEW WAR AGAINST CHINA OVER 'ECONOMIC AGGRESSION'" http://www.newsweek.com/trump-starts-new-war-against-china-over-economic-aggression-750502 http://www.newsweek.com/trump-starts-new-war-against-china-o...

nemesisj 9y ago
This type of negative opinion on China is shared all too often on HN, and it's really irritating. It's also untrue. For example, lets go to the WTO itself and see the list of current disputes, which is helpfully grouped by country: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_country_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_countr... - China is currently responding to 39 complaints. - The USA is responding to 132. Which is more than the entire EU (84) and more than any other country. It's really tiring to see the "China is a protectionist market" narrative trotted out again and again, unchallenged, and is probably second only to the "China is encroaching on the South China sea" narrative in terms of how hypocritical both views are, especially when espoused by Americans.
- michaelscott 9y ago
  I'm not sure I understand.. are you saying that China is NOT a protectionist market? There is plenty of evidence to the contrary. It's true that such a view doesn't disregard the often equally protectionist approaches of countries like the US, yes, but the former can't be denied just because of the latter.
- 9y ago

xen2xen1 9y ago

Reminds me of how the Soviets supposedly bought different sized rail cars than Europe so that it was harder to invade. Sounds more like a military protectionist measure than an economic one.

walshemj 9y ago
No it was a holdover from the tsarist days when Russia stdardised on a different gauge
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
If you take a train from Beijing to Moscow, there is a gauge switch for the cars once you hit Mongolia (they literally lift the cars up and switch the wheels).

foodislove 9y ago

Protectionism with Chinese Characteristics It's a pretty common tactic. Cite "national security" or any other vaguely plausible reason to deny access to non-favored firms (foreign companies, and local companies who don't have the "connections"). If anyone complains, government spokesperson and 50 cent mafia generate lots of angry nationalistic crying. If another country retaliates, same spokesperson and 50 cent mafia will then decry with a straight face how hypocritical "democracies" are and how great Xi Jinping is. The game plan is simple. Buy and/or steal tech. Rebadge as Chinese, then bankrupt the original creators by leveraging government subsidies and underpaid workers ie Segway.

paradite 9y ago
US and EU have in the past blocked several Chinese companies (ZTE, Huawei, etc) for national security reasons as well. Would you classify them as protectionism? If yes, then why are you complaining? If not, then why are you applying double standards here?
- pas 9y ago
  Why not judge the concerns on their own merit? Blocking a chip or other technology that's hard to vet is one thing. Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and public satellites? Does not really makes sense. Now, of course these cases can and should be compared, but so far it seems that citing national security issues in one case seems to be pretty baseless excuse, whereas in the other case it seems to have some merit, even if the actual ban of Chinese sourced components is ridiculous, because a lot of other things are sourced/imported from China with the same or more severe espionage potential.
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    > Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and public satellites? Does not really makes sense. Then no one needs to map the road anyway, why bother?
    - 9y ago

dis-sys 9y ago

Is there any international law or treaty explicitly requiring countries to allow their roads to be mapped by foreign countries/companies?

juanmirocks 9y ago
No. But the agreements of the WTO support the equal treatment for every company anywhere. The Chinese government only permits its own Chinese companies to profit, while block basically all foreign ones.
logfromblammo 9y ago
Common sense, perhaps? Large militaries will create their own up-to-date maps for every region of the world where they could possibly expect to be operating. They will, of course, keep strategic details in such maps secret, but with a bit of marginal effort, the maps deemed to have low military relevance can also be sold to civilians for their business purposes. In order to keep a location secret now, it can't be visible from space. And it can't have surface roads leading to it, or even change the surface significantly from historic aerial photographs of the same location. And it definitely can't have radio signals coming out of it. That basically means tunnels and submarines. There exist people whose jobs are to stare at satellite images all day, classify them, and draw shapes into a database. There is no longer any credible military rationale for restricting by law the creation of surface maps.
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  It eats up foreign military budgets.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Those militaries can't trust your civil maps anyway, no matter how accurate they may be in the parts where people actually use them. It's not like you're going to have that featureless black square labeled as "ICBM silo" instead of "dairy barn".

yingliu4203 9y ago

It's a big surprise to me for a while that China Government blocks so many U.S. internet services but no complaints from the U.S. government what only complaints on old-type of unfair trading: steel, consumer goods, solar panels etc. The digital economy is much a bigger deal.

majormajor 9y ago
> The digital economy is much a bigger deal. Is it really? Or would it all be compressible if someone else had complete control over your manufacturing and hardware supply chain? Strategically I think China having a bigger Amazon competitor than anyone else pales in its relevance to the US compared to US infrastructure relying on Chinese-produced components.

saosebastiao 9y ago

This is the sore spot economists often have with anti-trade politics. Recap: people tend to only think of the benefits of trade in the money they make from trade, and not the products or ideas that they get when other countries make money from us. There are benefits to both buying from and selling to other countries, and by only considering one side, we make decisions that make us poorer. China doesn't want foreign companies making money from Chinese maps in China. As a result, Chinese firms may make a tiny bit more money, but one billion people have drastically worse maps.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Chaebixi 9y ago
> but one billion people have drastically worse maps. This is something that the Chinese government demonstrably does not care about. They even mandate that an obfuscated coordinate system be used by GPS units and maps in China.
majormajor 9y ago
Economists often understate the value (especially to government and powerful connected folks) of stability and control while focusing on things like "massive number of people with objectively worse maps." The potential-foreign-influenced-insurrection-to-better-maps exhange rate is tough to pin down. ;)

juanmirocks 9y ago

The leading position of China in AI and Quatum technology is very worrying. We must adapt. AI: https://www.ft.com/content/856753d6-8d31-11e7-a352-e46f43c5825d https://www.ft.com/content/856753d6-8d31-11e7-a352-e46f43c58... Quantum tech: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/china-successfully-demonstrates-quantum-encryption-by-hosting-a-video-call https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/china-s...

ChuckMcM 9y ago

They are not wrong, in that detailed maps of streets can reveal more than simply how to drive around. The combination of both detailed maps and vehicle flow is even more telling in terms of economics and other activities. It will be interesting to watch the ramifications of this sort of policy. As China moves to become a leading economy with a high level of technology distributed throughout the country, it will become harder to control communications and information dispersal. Historically information access has been anathema to their style of governing and I can't see how they can have both.

dsl 9y ago
The first film based government satellite imagery was 0.3 m/pixel, in the 1960s. It has only gotten better since then. (For comparison you can buy GeoEye 1 data today commercially at 0.41 m/pixel) We also regularly fly stealth collection aircraft over Chinese airspace. At this point all the strategic things an invading army worries about (bridge heights, strength of roads, width between buildings for turning tanks, etc) can be obtained easily from overhead reconnaissance. Hedge funds have been flying satellites to collect economic indicators (traffic flow in retail spaces, fill levels in oil storage tanks, number of ships in port, etc) since the '90s.
- taobility 9y ago
  I believe you are live in Silicon Valley. You remind me a story from Billions that how local people fool the Wall Street traders or Hedge funds you described to estimate the factory's outcome by just those Satellite photos. If you believe Satellite photos are enough, why the article still complain Chinese government's behavior.
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  I think you might be mis-remembering the history of satellite surveillance. In the 60's you would be lucky if you got 3 meters per pixel (see https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/declass_1 https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/declass_1 for additional details) That said, there have been claims of 0.1 m GSD satellites[1]. That said, satellites cannot read street signs or business names or capture WiFi hotspots or measure mean traffic density. Things that 'streetview' cars do all the time in order to create a better navigation experience. That information may or may not be interesting to the military but I can imagine ways that it would be interesting to business and finance and enforcement folks. It is perhaps opportunities for that sort of scrutiny that is unwelcome? [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-image-resolution-keeps-improving-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-image-resolution-ke...

bluthru 9y ago

Ugh, I really wish everyone contributed to OpenStreetMap and shared its dataset. I don't want map accuracy to be a competitive advantage.

jxramos 9y ago

For some reason this makes me think about that time I read that Russia installed wider train tracks to prevent trains from other countries from slipping in and entering the country.

drwu 9y ago

To be fair, mapping and geo measuring were forbidden in China even before self driving becoming a popular topic. Not only the foreign companies, even a lot of chinese companies are still not allowed to do such measurements. It was rather a military decision than an economic one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...