
China destroys 30k ‘incorrect’ world maps, claims Indian terrority - ycombonator
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-destroys-30000-incorrect-world-maps/article26642135.ece
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ryandrake
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!

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thinkingkong
Wild. Any idea why?

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ryandrake
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_d...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China)

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zeckalpha
> 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.

~~~
crooked-v
> 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
> 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#Pos...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan#Possible_military_solutions_and_intervention)

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plumeria
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?

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aatharuv
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.

