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All Maps in China are Transformed
- sebbi 15y agoDo they use navigation via GPS there? Can't imagine how that would work with "random" maps ...
- iloveponies 15y agoIs OpenStreetMaps blocked in China? If not, there could be huge precedence to subvert this.
- paxswill 15y agoOSM is banned in China [0]. [0] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_China#Legality http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_China#Legalit...
- felipe 15y agoI developed a project in China using OSM and it's certainly not blocked there (i. e.: The host is accessible). The problem of OSM in China is its limited data-set. For example, in the city I developed the project OSM had only the major streets, and the map was quite old.
- jann 15y agoProbably because private mapping is prohibited and there is no public-domain map data. from paxswill's link: "According to the Surveying and Mapping Law of the People's Republic of China, private surveying and mapping activities are illegal in mainland China."[0] [0]http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_China#Legality http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_China#Legalit...
- rmc 15y agono public-domain map data For the record there is no public domain map data in a lot of countries in Europe. The USA has the sensible approach of 'all government data (incl. maps) should be public domain'. In Europe the state owned mapping organisations do the mapping and claim full copyright on the maps & data. The 'illegal to make your own maps' is, obviously, not the case in EU
- iliis 15y ago> In Europe the state owned mapping organisations do the mapping and claim full copyright on the maps & data. This is true here in Switzerland. You have to pay quite a bit for our maps. I think it's a good thing actually, because their quality is worth the price. They provide extreme detail even in very remote locations (well, remote for us at least ;)). And for doing quick lookups, there's a free online-map at http://map.geo.admin.ch/ http://map.geo.admin.ch/, which also provides a lot of statistical data.
- rmc 15y agoYep. OSM was set up by some people from the UK and the OS knows the location of everything that's more than about 20cm big and nailed down (from planning applications & surveying), so they have lots of high quality data. However most people/businesses don't need that. Just look at Google maps & OpenStreetMap. They don't have submetre accuracy, however there are still quite useful to people and businesses.
- yellowbkpk 15y agoOSM is probably illegal in China, but it's not blocked: http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=openstreetmap.org http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=openst...
- fs111 15y agoHow is this news? I work in the digital mapping world and there everybody knows this. You cannot even get the data out of China, all data has to stay within China and if you want to do map business in China, you can only do it through a joint-venture with a Chinese company. [edit] BTW: India is similar, they are not scrambling the map, but it cannot leave the country either. So as a map-maker you have to have a local company there in order to do business.
- iloveponies 15y agoIt's news to the rest of us who don't work in that world.
- FuzzyDunlop 15y agoRequiring legitimate incorporation in a foreign country in order to do business there (typically through partnership with a domestic firm) is also not unique to China or map making.
- nate_meurer 15y agoNo, but doing so in order to ensure state control of information for propaganda purposes is certainly a feature of tyrannical governments, China being a particularly strong example.
- joelhaasnoot 15y agoGetting detailed maps in lots of coutries is difficult. Lived in Ethiopia for a while, which up until 1993 was governed by a communist regime. Around 2000 it was still law that in order to get maps on a 1:10000 scale you needed a government license/permit and could only be bought at the "Mapping Authority". 1:100000 maps on the other hand were available everywhere. Lots of other countries have restrictions for instance on key bridges and other infrastructure, disallowing access, pictures, stopping, etc.
- zrgiu_ 15y agoI've been in Beijing for the past 3 months, and I've been relying solely on Google Maps to get around. I never had one single problem. If there ever was any discrepancy between maps and the real world, I didn't see it. I don't doubt there are issues, but in Beijing I haven't seen them.
- jann 15y agoIt's generally not by much, but when you're relying on google maps to get exact coordinates, you might get into trouble. If you switch between map and satellite mode here, you have a distance of about 390m between the location in both maps. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.25977,108.946309&num=1&vpsrc=0&ie=UTF8&t=m&z=15 http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.25977,108.946309&num=1&...
- gbog 15y agoYes and there is a fix in a cyanogen modded version.
- devmach 15y agoCould it be true also for the some parts of Europe ? When i was in Belgium ( Brugge ) and Germany ( Nürnberg, Berlin ) i used google maps a lot. And i realised some streets, not all, looks longer or shorter than others on the map.
- nobody31 15y agoGenerally buying national map data is expensive in europe. The naming of streets is also quite complex, if the street has been there for 1000years then it's likely that various of layers of government aren't quite in synch with what they are calling it. so if google maps just uses a free public domain source it might not match what the city council or the post office use
- rmc 15y agoIn the USA, map data from the government is public domain. In Europe this is not the case. You have to pay for map data from the government. As a result Google Maps is usually based off 3rd party map data like TeleAtlas, who use things like aerial imagery & guesswork. This can result in not 100% accurate maps, so there can be mistakes and errata like that. That's much more likely than government control.
- bahman2000 15y agoi don't think it's unique to China take a look at this POI on 4sq: http://4sq.com/rArZMj http://4sq.com/rArZMj It starts with a street view. If you zoom in a little, turns out the bar is out in the water! When you switch to Satellite view, the bar is where it is supposed to be, on the shore.
- nate_meurer 15y agoI don't see the anomaly you're talking about. At any rate, it was probably just that -- an anomaly in the mapping software -- which is completely different from the government-mandated misinformation that is the subject of this story.
- asmosoinio 15y agoIsn't that just an inaccuracy in how the shore is modeled in the map data?
- machinagod 15y agoThere's a couple of regulations for selling GPS enabled devices in China (I am a software guy on a major PND manufacturer with products being sold in China). - The map data is scrambled (GPS coordinates are encrypted). - To correlate a GPS position with the map data, you plug the HW position through an encryption library (which you have to compile in a specific government building in Beijing). - Border drawing is strongly regulated: no border line between Mainland China and Taiwan, Tibet is of course China, South East Asia Islands can't have border lines drawn and Kashmir is a big thing also with border lines. - You can't show pure GPS coordinates - You can't include a number or POIs in your map (mostly government buildings/facilities). As a note, India as a certain degree of insanity as well: You can't export a map. Launching a PND there involved shipping a bunch of map technicians there to actually make sure we never got a map outside of India... Cheers, R
- andrewcooke 15y agoso what you're calling scrambling/encryption is actually a transformation? the encryption library transforms the coordinates so that they match the distorted map? what is the advantage of this? couldn't an attacker get a copy of the software? is there some kind of real-time authorisation step so that they can disable the transformation or change it? [edit: thanks; wasn't thinking you thought it a good idea, just curious for more info]
- machinagod 15y agoYes... it's not very hard to reverse engineer. I'm not questioning the advantage (in my view it's a small roadblock if you're motivated enough to actually get the data) just stating an inane regulation...
- yaix 15y agoEverywhere in China you can buy illlegally imported smartphones (cheaper, avoids chinese sales taxes) from Hongkong, all with GPS included.
- jrockway 15y ago
- vgrichina 15y agoIt isn't surprising at all.Soviet Union maps were also intentionally inaccurate. This inaccuracy still often appears in xUSSR maps.
- bigwally 15y agoThis is not a problem with using a GPS, the problem is the shift from using different mapping technologies. Trying to get satellite and the map portions to line up is very difficult. Trying to do it on a global scale with data from multiple sources... you get the idea. Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal evidence and use the word red. And as always bring up other countries that seem scary on fox news.
- travisp 15y ago>Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal evidence and use the word red. And as always bring up other countries that seem scary on fox news. I don't know if the author's analysis is accurate, but I'm pretty sure the author is Chinese. I doubt he is repeating what he hears on Fox News.
- tompagenet2 15y agoWhile I understand your cynicism, my experience in Shanghai and Beijing suggests that Google Maps are some way off between satellite and streetmap modes. I have not found the same problem (or at least to anywhere near the same level) in the UK, Chicago, Michigan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Slovakia and many other countries. There does seem to be an offset applied. An example in Shanghai: http://g.co/maps/m34n8 http://g.co/maps/m34n8 An example in Seoul: http://g.co/maps/4gk3t http://g.co/maps/4gk3t Note the near perfect alignment in the latter, and way-off alignment in the former.
- yvolution 15y agoNo where else has more sky scrapers than Shanghai and Beijing, which easily affects your GPS signal.
- cbr 15y agoIf you mean buildings over 100m, then no: 1 Hong Kong 2 New York City 3 Tokyo 4 Dubai 5 Shanghai Beijing is #20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_most_skyscrapers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_most_skyscr...
- ArchD 15y agoUseful information. That explains why I was having so much trouble navigating with mapping software on my Android phone when I visited. Now, I wonder if there's a workaround.
- wangweij 15y agoBoth Google Maps and Nokia OVI work perfectly fine on my E71 here in China. I guess they just get that encryption library linked inside so the position of my locations always match the roads and buildings on the map. On the other hand, the satellite images in Google Maps do have an offset, which means Google has not redraw the satellite images. Either because Google is unwilling to do that, or, as machinagod said, they cannot take the encryption library back to their image server to do the recalculation.
- rmc 15y agoThere are several tools that allow you to compare OpenStreetMap and Google Maps by overlaying partially on the other. Here's one of the area in question: http://sautter.com/map/?zoom=15&lat=31.21741&lon=121.4504&layers=B000000TFFFFFTFF http://sautter.com/map/?zoom=15&lat=31.21741&lon=121... You can see the noticable difference in street geometry.
- marshray 15y agoBack in the early 90's (in the US) I had a friend who was a college student from China. In the common area of her dorm there was a huge wall-size Rand-McNally map of the world. We were looking it over. "There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan." "You know Taiwan is really not that big." she said. "What do you mean?" "Map makers show it larger than it really is in order to exaggerate its importance." I was a little weirded out by that idea. This girl was pretty intelligent, she seemed to know some math and logical thinking. She was in the process of becoming a CPA. For better or worse I responded with practical analysis: "How would that even work? You and I could go buy maps right now for navigating ships and airplanes, those would have to be accurate in order to function. We could compare them to this one and if they are noticeably different we could complain and the company that made the map would lose face. Why would Rand-McNally give a shit about the political importance of Taiwan anyway, enough to risk their own credibility?" "They just do. All map makers do this." She would not be convinced.
- narkee 15y agoAre you suggesting that in this case the blogger is similarly misinformed or deluded? I don't think it's unreasonable to think that China is manipulating its map data, particularly when other people here in the mapping industry have already said this is well known in their field.
- marshray 15y agoAre you suggesting that in this case the blogger is similarly misinformed or deluded? No.
- PakG1 15y agoI think the gp is telling an anecdote that is an interesting example of the difficulty that exists in China for certain things, and in no way states that the blogger is misinformed or deluded. An interesting anecdote from my side, though not necessarily map-related. But in the same theme as gp. This summer, I was volunteering teaching English to rural kids in China. One of the kids kept writing this big message on blackboards and stuff that Osama bin Laden was still alive. One of the local volunteers read what he was writing and was upset at him for fooling around so much. Later, I asked her what's up, and she told me what he was writing. WTF. So in the team meeting later that night, I talk with my fellow volunteers about this, and wonder if I have some kind of crazy kid on my hands. Then the Chinese volunteers told me not to worry about it, he's just writing stuff. I'm like, "What do you mean, how do you know?" Then they started talking about how people distrust the government these days, are unhappy, etc. I'm like, "What the heck does that have to do with anything?" Turns out that all over the Chinese web, this was a really popular meme where Chinese youth displayed their sarcasm at anything the government said. Even things that they knew to be true could not be true because the government said it. It was only a meme, much like the Hitler videos we see on Youtube. Scared me for a day. But suffice it to say, people in China aren't so trusting of what their nation says as before. Living here, I hear it from my colleagues and friends every day. That being said, there's very little right now that they can do to voice their opinion because it's still a touchy atmosphere. This lady is very informative. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/yang_lan.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/yang_lan.html
- john_horton 15y agoIt seems like there is little tactical payoff in doing this, as large, foreign militaries would already have detailed, accurate maps covering the whole world, China included. I bet this is an internal-resistance oriented policy.
- pyre 15y agoEven then, if there were an internal-resistance movement that was well organized enough, they could get around this stuff. Seems more like it's there to keep some bureaucrats employed and possibly to prevent lone-wolf resistance 'fighters' who might not be well organized/smart enough to get around these measures.
- yvolution 15y agoHow maps look like depend on a whole bunch of other factors like the projection they use etc. Thus simply overlaying the maps and say, hey, this is distorted, is simply unfounded. It's very likely that Google maps etc may be adopting different projection systems so the users can have smooth using experience zooming in and out, and panning across the global without feeling the earth is round. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection
- srl 15y agoA map projection issue could a) easily be fixed, and b) would have been noticed and fixed already, as it would manifest in more places than just china.
- mapster 15y agoIt could simply be a map projection issue - where the traffic data projection is slightly off by an order of 1000 meters. This datum shift could be easily fixed by Google.
- srl 15y agoA map projection issue would show up in other places on the map, and would have been fixed by now.
- mapster 15y agoNot true at all. Data can be pulled from multiple database sources, each with their own projection info., so if there are datum shifting issues, you can have some pieces not aligning to basemap while others do.
- DizzyDoo 15y agoThis reminds me of the Peters Projection, one of the weirder attempts to map the oblate spheroid nature of the earth to a 2D plane. http://www.petersmap.com/ http://www.petersmap.com/
- ugh 15y agoMany people will know about this projection (and first have heard about different projections in general) from The West Wing episode Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody%27s_Going_to_Emergency,_Somebody%27s_Going_to_Jail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody%27s_Going_to_Emergency...).
- nkassis 15y agoWow, it would definitively be hard to use such a map in Canada looking at how it squeeze the polls.
- biot 15y agoThough politicians would love to squeeze the polls during an election.
- eob 15y agoHere's a completely anecdotal, "a friend of a friend.." story, but I think it's a cool yi and you'll enjoy it: A friend of a friend is a cartographer who works in DC. According to this person, the official subway map of DC distorts the true geography of the city -- and the subway lines -- as much for security purposes as it does graphic design purposes. The red line, in particular, apparently is drawn with a completely bogus path through the city on the maps. The true path of the line goes underneath the national mall and several important government buildings, if this person is to be believed.
- marshray 15y agoSubway "maps" tend to be more like generalized graph diagrams than cartographically accurate maps. After all, you're stuck in a box and your only choice is which node to get off at. But it wouldn't surprise me if an overlay on a cartographic map was intentionally inaccurate. One time I was in DC a cab driver was trying to get me to my hotel. His GPS went totally nonfunctional when we were in view of the Pentagon. It would be an interesting research project to ride around subway systems with a data-logging accelerometer (like a smartphone). Integrate acceleration to get velocity, integrate velocity to get relative position, get GPS fixes when the signal is available, and diagram the results.
- georgieporgie 15y agoHis GPS went totally nonfunctional when we were in view of the Pentagon. Which is pretty humorous since, once you're vaguely close to it, it's hard not to find it. If they built several other pentagonal buildings in the area, it would be a different story. :-)
- Game_Ender 15y agoThey might have some local GPS jammers to make it harder for unmanned drones or bombs to navigate near the building.
- nkassis 15y agoInteresting, I had someone report something similar next to the Canadian SIS building in Ottawa. His GPS was telling him the completely wrong route. I don't have a GPS personally to try it.
- sunyc 15y agoof course it is china only. in china licensed gps maker can buy a chip deal with the offset ,provided by government. it is a non uniformed transformation.being applied to.whole map , to lower the accruacy.
- jackfoxy 15y agoHistorically maps have been closely guarded military secrets. As late as the Renaissance possession of the wrong map could get you executed by European powers, even in peacetime. Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim is largely based on the true story of British surveying and map making in India and central Asia.
- azov 15y agoAFAIK, military maps are still secret in most places. This is because they contain information that cannot be easily derived from hi-res satellite imagery. Stuff like "how much weight can this bridge support", "how deep is this ford", etc. This is important if you are trying to, say, drive tanks through unfamiliar terrain.
- tomjen3 15y agoBut the thing is that most bridges which has a weight limit on them has that limit on a sign next to them. And if you want to know the depth of a ford, well you can go and measure it. So I really don't get why they would make them secret.
- bdunbar 15y agoSo I really don't get why they would make them secret. It's helpful to know the ford depths of a river crossing before you get there with your tanks. Take a fanciful example. One could not, say, send a U.S. Army survey team to measure the depth of the Orne before the allies landed in Normandy. The Germans would really object to that kind of thing.
- cleaver 15y agoI did see exactly the same thing in Toronto for some time. The satellite image was misaligned with the street map for the Jane/Finch area. It's fixed now. I do wonder how much trouble Google goes to fix up maps in China. I can't really see enough of the map to tell if this appears to be deliberate distortion, or just another error. Hopefully Google is still keeping their maps up-to-date... When I was in Beijing, I found the Google map much easier for finding bus routes that the local alternative.
- ctl51 15y agoFirst - that post is 3 years old. Secondly - I lived in Beijing for half a year in 2010 (ie. 2 years after this post was published). I used Google Maps often on my smartphone, and the GPS fix on the features map was incorrect (ie. I would be standing at a street corner and it would show me a few hundred meters down the street on the map).
- bigwally 15y agoThe Yahoo Maps for China don't look very transformed. http://maps.yahoo.com/#lat=39.8908713496569&lon=116.4246940612793&zoom=15&mvt=h&trf=1 http://maps.yahoo.com/#lat=39.8908713496569&lon=116.4246... (This isn't a vote for Yahoo Maps, just an observation)
- languagehacker 15y agoThis really made me pine for the following feature Google will have in five years: "It looks like this was written in English by a non-native speaker. Would you like us to make this more grammatical? (Yes) (No)"
- kleim 15y agoThis is so ridiculous. China really thinks US Army is using Google maps? I wonder how they did not figured out that all armies are not working like theirs...