6 ms·

China destroys 30k ‘incorrect’ world maps, claims Indian terrority

76 points by ycombonator 8y ago

zeckalpha 8y ago
> Almost 30,000 “incorrect” world maps, showing Taiwan as a separate country and wrong depiction of the Sino-Indian border, were destroyed by the customs authorities in Qingdao, it said. > “What China did in the map market was absolutely legitimate and necessary, because sovereignty and territorial integrity are the most important things to a country. Both Taiwan and South Tibet are parts of China’s territory which is sacred and inviolable based on the international law,” Liu Wenzong, professor from the department of International Law of China Foreign Affairs University said.
- mc32 8y ago
  They are touchy about their maps for sure. If you want to get kicked out of the country, just make it known you own a map like these at your workplace. Deportation will not be far off.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  > showing Taiwan as a separate country Fun fact: the government of Taiwan would also object to these maps. Both the RoC and the PRoC claim that all of China (mainland + the island of Taiwan) is actually one country, but disagree on who's rightfully in charge of it. This is also what both governments use to justify allowing civilian travel between them, with a polite legal fiction along the lines of 'that's still China over there so you can go there, even though that territory is controlled by those people we don't like'.
  - CharlesColeman 8y ago
    > Fun fact: the government of Taiwan would also object to these maps. Both the RoC and the PRoC claim that all of China (mainland + the island of Taiwan) is actually one country, but disagree on who's rightfully in charge of it. Another fun fact: the RoC would probably give up its claim to Mainland China if it could, but it can't because the PRC would interpret that as a declaration of independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Possible_military_solutions_and_intervention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Pos...
hcnews 8y ago
Fuck the Chinese, they have no rights to take over other country's territories. The region's nations have to make a united stand against this. Hopefully in 20 years, India will be much more powerful than China and can use its clout to shut their stupid claims and bring order to the region. Sorry about the language.
- dang 8y ago
  Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. Please do not post like this to Hacker News again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - hcnews 8y ago
    I don't see this as Nationalistic flamewar. I am calling out China's bad behavior since China, the government is the acting entity. There's also evidence that this Chinese behavior isn't limited to India. Hence, more the reason to pin it to the actor, which happens to be China, the government. Maybe I should've clarified I was referring to Chinese government and Indian government in the previous comment.
    - dang 8y ago
      "Fuck the Chinese" counts as nationalistic flamewar on this site. In the extreme. In fact, your comment upthread exemplifies precisely the nationalistic flamewar we don't want here. So if you could please recalibrate, we'd be grateful. Here's one way to do that: imagine yourself being from the opposite background (e.g. in this case China), reading whatever comment you plan to post. Could you receive interesting information from that comment? Or only hostility? If the latter, rewrite it until it communicates interesting information. You're not the only person who needs to do this! We all do.
devoply 8y ago
Considering how Chinese treat non-Han Chinese, this racist fascist government should be resisted with armed resistance if necessary in Arunachal Pradesh. India should put some nukes there for good measure. In fact the US should help India guard the sovereignty of this province as it would be of great strategic use to the US to build bases. edit: To the mods, the Chinese government is a racist fascist government and should be called out for their racist fascism against the people of Tibet as well as the Uigur people.
- dang 8y ago
  Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. Please do not post like this to Hacker News again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ryandrake 8y ago
Anyone who has worked on mapping software knows that China has all these special rules you have to abide by if you want to sell there. You basically end up with two separate products: one for China and one for the rest of the world. It’s not just that you need to show borders a certain way, but also you need to exaggerate the size of certain islands and show some things where they don’t actually exist. They even use a different coordinate system so if you get latitude and longitude from a GPS you cannot plot them on a Chinese map without applying a mathematical transformation To the coordinates beforehand. Lots of special case code and parallel data!
- thinkingkong 8y ago
  Wild. Any idea why?
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    No clue—I just wrote the code. If I had to guess, CN probably justifies it as a national security thing. If you want to learn more there seems to be a Wikipedia article [1] that mentions some of the rules and the coordinate system. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...
- dTal 8y ago
  Politics is one thing, but that's astonishing that they require lying about geological fact. Exaggerating the shape of islands can actually kill people, if they're trying to navigate the ocean with those maps.
- kingofpandora 8y ago
  In fairness every country uses local coordinate reference systems so transforming between those coordinates and lat/lon is a totally normal thing to do.
plumeria 8y ago
What is the point of displaying the point of view of a scholar from China (from International Law of China Foreign Affairs University), and omitting to offer views from scholars of the other affected territories?
aatharuv 8y ago
Note that India is similarly picky about maps concerning territory it doesn't control, though admittedly, it's happy with censoring maps or having people print disclaimers, and doesn't destroy them completely. Economist maps showing the India/Pakistan/China boundaries in Kashmir are regularly censored. Any country which claims land needs to never give up its claim as a bargaining chip. India and China just go to extremes over it including privately produced content.

76 points by ycombonator 8y ago

> Almost 30,000 “incorrect” world maps, showing Taiwan as a separate country and wrong depiction of the Sino-Indian border, were destroyed by the customs authorities in Qingdao, it said. > “What China did in the map market was absolutely legitimate and necessary, because sovereignty and territorial integrity are the most important things to a country. Both Taiwan and South Tibet are parts of China’s territory which is sacred and inviolable based on the international law,” Liu Wenzong, professor from the department of International Law of China Foreign Affairs University said.

mc32 8y ago
They are touchy about their maps for sure. If you want to get kicked out of the country, just make it known you own a map like these at your workplace. Deportation will not be far off.
crooked-v 8y ago
> showing Taiwan as a separate country Fun fact: the government of Taiwan would also object to these maps. Both the RoC and the PRoC claim that all of China (mainland + the island of Taiwan) is actually one country, but disagree on who's rightfully in charge of it. This is also what both governments use to justify allowing civilian travel between them, with a polite legal fiction along the lines of 'that's still China over there so you can go there, even though that territory is controlled by those people we don't like'.
- CharlesColeman 8y ago
  > Fun fact: the government of Taiwan would also object to these maps. Both the RoC and the PRoC claim that all of China (mainland + the island of Taiwan) is actually one country, but disagree on who's rightfully in charge of it. Another fun fact: the RoC would probably give up its claim to Mainland China if it could, but it can't because the PRC would interpret that as a declaration of independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Possible_military_solutions_and_intervention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Pos...

hcnews 8y ago

Fuck the Chinese, they have no rights to take over other country's territories. The region's nations have to make a united stand against this. Hopefully in 20 years, India will be much more powerful than China and can use its clout to shut their stupid claims and bring order to the region. Sorry about the language.

dang 8y ago
Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. Please do not post like this to Hacker News again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hcnews 8y ago
  I don't see this as Nationalistic flamewar. I am calling out China's bad behavior since China, the government is the acting entity. There's also evidence that this Chinese behavior isn't limited to India. Hence, more the reason to pin it to the actor, which happens to be China, the government. Maybe I should've clarified I was referring to Chinese government and Indian government in the previous comment.
  - dang 8y ago
    "Fuck the Chinese" counts as nationalistic flamewar on this site. In the extreme. In fact, your comment upthread exemplifies precisely the nationalistic flamewar we don't want here. So if you could please recalibrate, we'd be grateful. Here's one way to do that: imagine yourself being from the opposite background (e.g. in this case China), reading whatever comment you plan to post. Could you receive interesting information from that comment? Or only hostility? If the latter, rewrite it until it communicates interesting information. You're not the only person who needs to do this! We all do.

devoply 8y ago

Considering how Chinese treat non-Han Chinese, this racist fascist government should be resisted with armed resistance if necessary in Arunachal Pradesh. India should put some nukes there for good measure. In fact the US should help India guard the sovereignty of this province as it would be of great strategic use to the US to build bases. edit: To the mods, the Chinese government is a racist fascist government and should be called out for their racist fascism against the people of Tibet as well as the Uigur people.

dang 8y ago
Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which nation you have a problem with. Please do not post like this to Hacker News again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ryandrake 8y ago

Anyone who has worked on mapping software knows that China has all these special rules you have to abide by if you want to sell there. You basically end up with two separate products: one for China and one for the rest of the world. It’s not just that you need to show borders a certain way, but also you need to exaggerate the size of certain islands and show some things where they don’t actually exist. They even use a different coordinate system so if you get latitude and longitude from a GPS you cannot plot them on a Chinese map without applying a mathematical transformation To the coordinates beforehand. Lots of special case code and parallel data!

thinkingkong 8y ago
Wild. Any idea why?
- ryandrake 8y ago
  No clue—I just wrote the code. If I had to guess, CN probably justifies it as a national security thing. If you want to learn more there seems to be a Wikipedia article [1] that mentions some of the rules and the coordinate system. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...
dTal 8y ago
Politics is one thing, but that's astonishing that they require lying about geological fact. Exaggerating the shape of islands can actually kill people, if they're trying to navigate the ocean with those maps.
kingofpandora 8y ago
In fairness every country uses local coordinate reference systems so transforming between those coordinates and lat/lon is a totally normal thing to do.

plumeria 8y ago

What is the point of displaying the point of view of a scholar from China (from International Law of China Foreign Affairs University), and omitting to offer views from scholars of the other affected territories?

aatharuv 8y ago

Note that India is similarly picky about maps concerning territory it doesn't control, though admittedly, it's happy with censoring maps or having people print disclaimers, and doesn't destroy them completely. Economist maps showing the India/Pakistan/China boundaries in Kashmir are regularly censored. Any country which claims land needs to never give up its claim as a bargaining chip. India and China just go to extremes over it including privately produced content.