All Maps in China are Transformed

http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20081109_all_maps_in_china_are_transformed.htm

by jann • 15 years ago

175 115 15 years ago

home.wangjianshuo.com

iloveponies2• 15 years ago

Is OpenStreetMaps blocked in China? If not, there could be huge precedence to subvert this.

paxswill• 15 years ago

OSM is banned in China [0].

[0] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_China#Legalit...

felipe• 15 years ago

I 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.

yellowbkpk• 15 years ago

OSM is probably illegal in China, but it's not blocked: http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/index.php?siteurl=openst...

fs111• 15 years ago

How 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.

iloveponies2• 15 years ago

It's news to the rest of us who don't work in that world.

FuzzyDunlop• 15 years ago

Requiring 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.

joelhaasnoot• 15 years ago

Getting 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_• 15 years ago

I'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.

jann2• 15 years ago

It'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&...

gbog• 15 years ago

Yes and there is a fix in a cyanogen modded version.

devmach• 15 years ago

Could 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• 15 years ago

Generally 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

rmc10• 15 years ago

In 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• 15 years ago

i don't think it's unique to China

take a look at this POI on 4sq: 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_meurer4• 15 years ago

I 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• 15 years ago

Isn't that just an inaccuracy in how the shore is modeled in the map data?

machinagod2• 15 years ago

There'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• 15 years ago

so 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]

machinagod2• 15 years ago

Yes... 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• 15 years ago

Everywhere in China you can buy illlegally imported smartphones (cheaper, avoids chinese sales taxes) from Hongkong, all with GPS included.

jrockway• 15 years ago

One country, two systems.

georgieporgie2• 15 years ago

This makes me wonder if I brought my US Android phone to China to use it as a Wifi tablet device, am I technically breaking the law?

Luc• 15 years ago

(PND = Portable Navigation Device)

est3• 15 years ago

> Tibet is of course China

Do you guys put Tibet as disputed area on like 90% of the maps in the West? Really?

tokenadult• 15 years ago

On most maps published in the West, Tibet is shown as an integral part of the territory of the People's Republic of China, even though plenty of Americans drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers on their cars. That is the GOVERNMENTAL position of the United States at present, that Tibet is part of the territory of China. (Of course historical Tibet includes regions outside the current boundaries of the Tibet Autonomous Region administrative division of China, including most of the territory of what is called Qinghai Province and quite a bit of land in Sichuan Province.)

The case of Taiwan is even more confusing. A world globe I have from a decade ago, commercially published by a private business corporation rather than officially published, shows Taiwan and the mainland territories of China in the same color. (Usually this globe distinguishes different countries by different colors.) However, the globe also marks the location of both Beijing and Taipei (so spelled) with a star symbol indicating a capital city, suggesting that Taipei is the seat of a national government. United States law under the Taiwan Relations Act strikes a delicate balance between agreeing with the original assertion of both the P.R.C. and R.O.C. regimes that there is one China and Taiwan is a part of China and the current facts on the ground that China (the P.R.C.) and Taiwan (the island of Taiwan and various outlying islands, including some that historically were part of Fujian Province) are under distinct national administrations.

The Wikipedia article on Taiwan independence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_independence

seems to have enjoyed some good editing back-and-forth so that it is not entirely slanted to one point of view or another.

danbmil992• 15 years ago

What this reminds me of is USA's inane attempt to control encryption technology. Every state is used to controlling information, the tech is just moving too quickly for bureaucracies to even respond.

I'm sure there are thousands of Chinese engineers with careers transforming map coordinates. You don't want to put these people out of a job, do you?

Humans are funny.

vgrichina• 15 years ago

It isn't surprising at all.Soviet Union maps were also intentionally inaccurate. This inaccuracy still often appears in xUSSR maps.

bigwally2• 15 years ago

This 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• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

While 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 An example in Seoul: http://g.co/maps/4gk3t

Note the near perfect alignment in the latter, and way-off alignment in the former.

yvolution2• 15 years ago

No where else has more sky scrapers than Shanghai and Beijing, which easily affects your GPS signal.

rmc10• 15 years ago

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.

Not really. There are loads of different projection systems & coordinate system around the world, so all GIS software is able to deal with converting coordinates and reprojections etc.

Satellite & aerial imagery always has to be georectified and made 'location aware'. Once you've done that, it's trivial to reproject it to whatever system you want.

pekk3• 15 years ago

While I agree - in different words - that it's probably just a projection error, it is always extremely off-putting when the Overbearing Defensive Cyber-Army makes its appearance to defend China from any and every possible criticism.

It really does much more harm to China than a simple misunderstanding about projection errors.

wangweij• 15 years ago

Both 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.

rmc10• 15 years ago

There 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...

You can see the noticable difference in street geometry.

ArchD• 15 years ago

Useful 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.

marshray7• 15 years ago

Back 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• 15 years ago

Are 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.

marshray7• 15 years ago

Are you suggesting that in this case the blogger is similarly misinformed or deluded?

No.

PakG1• 15 years ago

I 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

pyre2• 15 years ago

Seems more likely that Chinese maps make Taiwan smaller, and when people in China point to the differences between locally made maps and foreign maps, they are told that foreign map makers are playing some sort of anti-China political game.

Or, people have it ingrained in them that Taiwan is small, and they all know that Chinese map-makers are politically motivated, so they assume that all map-makers are equally politically motivated.

rmc10• 15 years ago

those would have to be accurate in order to function

The most common form of map, Mercator projection, greatly distorts the area of land around the equator, and makes northernly (& southerly) lands appear much larger. It makes Canada, Greenland, Alaska, et al. appear quite large compared to Africa & South America. But those areas are much larger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection#Uses

marshray7• 15 years ago

Yes I was familiar with that at the time, but I don't recall if it was mentioned in our particular discussion. In any case, Taiwan is relatively far South in its region so the projection effect would tend to be reduced. It would actually have the effect of making mainland China look larger.

nate_meurer4• 15 years ago

Mercator distortion has nothing to do with the anecdote in the parent post. There the allegation was of deliberate inaccuracy, which renders a map non-functional for most purposes.

All 2D map projections produce either distortion or discontinuity. Neither of these affects a map's functionality in the way that outright inaccuracy does.

slipperyp• 15 years ago

There are a bunch of parallel conversations spawned from this 2 year old blog post. For reference, here's the area the author talked about in current google maps:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Huashan+Road,+Shanghai,+China&...

The locations are all still off and they're consistently off by an offset throughout Shanghai. There might be some deliberate dishonesty by map makers in China, but I don't think this is evidence of it - I think this is just an inaccurate projection. If you want to make bad maps to confuse people - first, that's probably pretty impossible with current information systems, even in China, and second, this would be a really bad attempt at it.

alexqgb3• 15 years ago

The Mercator projection isn't a good example of a map in which visual distortion and a lack of navigational utility go hand in hand.

Indeed, the hole point of the projection was to make navigation easier by allowing rhumb lines (the shortest distances between two points on a curved surface) to be charted as perfectly straight lines on a two-dimensional map. From these lines of constant bearing, mariners could work out the precise - and constant - angle they should maintain in relation to the pole star in order to get from one point to another.

Without a reliable method for establishing longitude at sea, 17th Century navigators could never be exactly sure how far along their courses they were, but at least they could know that they were heading in the right direction. Given the level of uncertainty involved in these enterprises, this one piece of (relatively) hard and verifiable data was extraordinarily important, making the accuracy of the projection, and the mathematically - if not visually - correct placement of shorelines within it especially important.

Unfortunately, the iconic value of the Mercator projection has vastly outlived its utility - or at least, the common awareness of the once formidable navigational problems it addressed. Far from seeing it as a brilliant technical solution, it is often seen through a purely political filter that views its strengths as weaknesses, while completely missing the map's actual intent.

orijing• 15 years ago

> "There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan."

You knew her disposition. (You were her friend). What was the goal of that comment, to incent a fruitless political discussion?

Edit: Whoa there. Why the downvotes? I am genuinely curious why the parent decided it was a good idea to stoke that discussion. I have friends whose political views are far from mine, and there are just DMZ topics that I don't dare bring up. For example, a discussion about the Federal Reserve and Operation Twist would be fruitless with my Libertarian friends, who just have a different opinion on that, which I believe is irreconcilable. I would say that's the same situation with Taiwan-strait politics.

barrkel• 15 years ago

Facts as concrete as physical dimensions are not really open to political debate.

marshray7• 15 years ago

My sense was she thought she was giving me a fact about geography I didn't know, as simple as that.

Later, she, another friend from China, and I had a more in-depth discussion about Taiwan. It was really interesting to get that perspective.

P.S. I have no idea why you're being downvoted either.

ljf• 15 years ago

Apparently Britain is also 'bigger' than it should be (it's really far smaller than France) on many maps, purely because the maps were made by the UK:

http://noisydecentgraphics.typepad.com/design/2008/07/this-i...

john_horton• 15 years ago

It 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.

pyre2• 15 years ago

Even 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.

yvolution2• 15 years ago

How 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

srl2• 15 years ago

A 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.

mapster2• 15 years ago

It 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.

srl2• 15 years ago

A map projection issue would show up in other places on the map, and would have been fixed by now.

mapster2• 15 years ago

Not 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• 15 years ago

This 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/

ugh• 15 years ago

Many 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...).

nkassis2• 15 years ago

Wow, it would definitively be hard to use such a map in Canada looking at how it squeeze the polls.

biot• 15 years ago

Though politicians would love to squeeze the polls during an election.

eob• 15 years ago

Here'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.

marshray7• 15 years ago

Subway "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.

georgieporgie2• 15 years ago

His 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. :-)

nkassis2• 15 years ago

Interesting, 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.

colanderman• 15 years ago

Integrate acceleration to get velocity, integrate velocity to get relative position, get GPS fixes when the signal is available, and diagram the results. Sadly integrating "real data" even once results in wild inaccuracies. A small error in acceleration turns into an offset in velocity which turns into large position drift over time.

viraptor• 15 years ago

Underground maps usually don't match the real geography. If you made a "real" map, it would be next to useless since the central stations should be all in one place with lots of empty space around. It's the destination / via station you care about when you know the destination, not realistic detail of the path itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_map has some examples of more realistic London underground maps (older editions). It's a common topic of graphic design / visualisation courses.

blasdel2• 15 years ago

I'm a DC native and that story is bullshit.

The red line does turn south a bit going west out of Gallery Place, but it doesn't go any further south than D street and doesn't go under any important federal buildings.

Besides, what would be the point? The National Mall is absolutely riddled with tunnels! West to east there's an old streetcar tunnel at 14th Street under the Bureau of Engraving, the 12th and 9th street road tunnels open to trucks, two tunnels apiece for the yellow/green and orange/blue lines with the latter going under dozens of federal buildings, the entire Smithsonian subway station, large underground art galleries south of the Smithsonian castle, the buried watercourses of Tiber Creek, the National Gallery gift shop & cafeteria under 4th street, the I-395 Center Leg Freeway that has the DOL built on top of it, the United States Capitol subway system, the old C Street streetcar tunnel under Senate Park, and the First Street heavy rail tunnel under the LOC / Supreme Court.

bdunbar3• 15 years ago

Which official map - the one posted in each station and online? Sure it's distorted: it has to make sense to millions of tourists. Most transit maps I've seen are the same: geographic realism is sacrificed to make it easier for patrons to get around.

Orange and Blue lines go under the Mall: this is reflected on the map. IIRC there is one stop at the Mall, several close. There aren't any Red line stops near the Mall.

several important government buildings

It's D.C. You can't shake a stick without hitting an important government building.

sunyc• 15 years ago

of 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• 15 years ago

Historically 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• 15 years ago

AFAIK, 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.

tomjen32• 15 years ago

But 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.

cleaver• 15 years ago

I 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• 15 years ago

First - 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).

bigwally2• 15 years ago

The Yahoo Maps for China don't look very transformed.

http://maps.yahoo.com/#lat=39.8908713496569&lon=116.4246...

(This isn't a vote for Yahoo Maps, just an observation)

languagehacker• 15 years ago

This 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• 15 years ago

This 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...

All Maps in China are Transformed

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