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People outside of China are served a different set of maps. Each country is served maps that conform to their territorial claims. E.g. If you view the map of I
by quitit 5y ago
People outside of China are served a different set of maps. Each country is served maps that conform to their territorial claims.
E.g. If you view the map of India while in India, it'll appear different than if you viewed it in China.
- chrononaut 5y agoWhy do we see some of these behaviors within China maps, outside China? > .. the obfuscated coordinate system for geo-aligning maps .. https://goo.gl/maps/Qr2QRB7aB2jrg9Rk7 https://goo.gl/maps/Qr2QRB7aB2jrg9Rk7 Roads are not aligned to the satellite imagery for example.
- T-A 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China#GPS_shift_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
- AYBABTME 5y agoThe same exists elsewhere, in South Korea that I know of. Bridges and dams disappear or move on maps, Google Maps doesn't have high res sat pictures, etc. Just to say, it's not great IMO but not only totalitarian states have a need for such obfuscation; healthy democracies too.
- thatcat 5y agowhat is the need that justifies this exactly?
- More-nitors 5y agomissiles and artillery can't remote-boom-boom if you can't know where they are
- wolverine876 5y agoNorth Korea won't think to look at other maps?
- necovek 5y agoOf course not! They choose their targets using Google Maps: nobody was ever fired for using Google Maps! :D
- More-nitors 5y ago> nobody was ever fired for hm that means 2 things there...
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoPerfect for those apple-maps guided bombs.
- ComodoHacker 5y agoIn a recent Donbass conflict, there were reports of Ukrainian military and militia using specially tailored Android apps with OSM data as base layers.
- Veen 5y agoIf you can get perfect coordinates from Apple Maps and your missiles have GPS, you're good to boom. It's not as though the missiles have an iPhone inside them.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoBut if your missiles have GPS surely you have satellites to get the coordinates yourself?
- Veen 5y ago
- colordrops 5y ago"healthy democracies" lol
- skinkestek 5y ago> Bridges and dams disappear or move on maps, Google Maps doesn't have high res sat pictures, etc. Not defending what I see as childish China the slightest, but one should be aware that even the best democracies don't necessarily publish entirely correct maps, and it is on purpose ;-)
- d3nj4l 5y agoTo add, India has a similar law for maps. Any company serving maps in India has to show, for example, all of Kashmir - including the ones we aren't in control of - as belonging to India. I've made a small hobby out of noting websites which should be illegal in India because of that. A recent memorable incident (not a website, and not found by me) was when John Oliver's Last Week Tonight did a show on Asian-Americans and the Indian streaming service that hosted LWT had to crop the map out. It's pretty funny.
- mathnmusic 5y agoOwnership disputes exist in many places across the world. But making an island appear larger than it is, is a unique demand that reminds me of Indiana trying to pass a law that declared the value of pi to be equal to 3.
- wolverine876 5y ago> I've made a small hobby out of noting websites which should be illegal in India because of that. Do you mean you are reporting these sites?
- d3nj4l 5y agoOf course not. I'm not a snitch.
- cachvico 5y agoWould be fascinating to see all of these discrepancies highlighted.
- sova 5y agoit's a practice reaching as far back as cartography itself
- xwolfi 5y agoThe old projections systems were even made to blow up what you cared about (your country) and be very scale-imprecised on the outskirt.
- wolverine876 5y agoThat might be less propaganda, and more about wanting a large, precise map of the area that interests you.
- aardvark179 5y agoProjections were chosen for a variety of reasons. For example the Mercator projection distorts the size of things far from the equator, but it does preserve local bearing and shape.
- anovikov 5y agoOne thing about claims (say display Crimea as part of Russia within Russia and as Ukraine elsewhere), but distorting SIZES of the places on maps according to someone's political preference is well... plain out ridiculous, laughable. It displays how messed up China is more than anything else. It's seriously hard to expect the place that does things like that, as a next superpower. You can't build a superpower on silly, 4-year-old level lies like that one.
- MichaelBurge 5y agoIt's a mistake to treat "China" as one coherent entity with a single unified purpose, which chooses to prioritize the mapping issue front-of-mind. China has over a billion people. That one middle manager in the maps department is personally offended by territory appearing smaller, has zero relation to the rest of the country and shouldn't affect your opinion. Many bureaucrats in the USA draw stupid lines in sand that nobody cares about, yet the USA is a strong superpower nonetheless.
- anovikov 5y agoBecause China is a dictatorship, it is OK to be seen as a single coherent entity, in my opinion.
- lovemenot 5y agoJust as in any large political system, China cannot be entirely controlled centrally. There are three or four levels of regional and local control below the centre. It would be impossible for Beijing to administer all of that detail. In foreign affairs, Beijing is sovereign - including anything related to the Senkaku / Diaoyu islands which are presently owned by Japan. So in this respect you are right. For local matters, there is considerable flexibility and internal conflict. Currently, Beijing encourages citizens to find fault and report administrative issues at local levels, but will brook no dissent of its own management. In domestic administration China is less coherent than your claim. All of the above could be equally true in a non-authoritarian form of government. I would argue that China's authoritarian politics are largely orthogonal to its degree of federation.
- veritascap 5y agoWe aren’t even looking at the same planet that we’re living on.
- soapdog 5y agoJust do a Google search for the kinds of maps the some American schools use, you'll be amazed. Once, my wife had to hear from a university geography professor in America that Texas was larger than Brazil. When contested the professor said he was pretty sure. I'm not supporting China territorial claims, but I don't expect anything different from their government. I did however expected better from the U.S.
- CincinnatiMan 5y agoOne professor making a mistake implies the US government is manipulating maps? How did you come to that conclusion?
- sc90 5y agoCould anyone share screenshots or images of juxtaposed examples of such map scenarios?