
China Blocks Foreign Companies from Mapping Its Roads for Self-Driving Cars - ourmandave
http://www.thedrive.com/tech/17001/china-blocks-foreign-companies-from-mapping-its-roads-for-self-driving-cars
======
foodislove
Protectionism with Chinese Characteristics

It's a pretty common tactic. Cite "national security" or any other vaguely
plausible reason to deny access to non-favored firms (foreign companies, and
local companies who don't have the "connections"). If anyone complains,
government spokesperson and 50 cent mafia generate lots of angry nationalistic
crying. If another country retaliates, same spokesperson and 50 cent mafia
will then decry with a straight face how hypocritical "democracies" are and
how great Xi Jinping is.

The game plan is simple. Buy and/or steal tech. Rebadge as Chinese, then
bankrupt the original creators by leveraging government subsidies and
underpaid workers ie Segway.

~~~
paradite
US and EU have in the past blocked several Chinese companies (ZTE, Huawei,
etc) for national security reasons as well. Would you classify them as
protectionism?

If yes, then why are you complaining? If not, then why are you applying double
standards here?

~~~
pas
Why not judge the concerns on their own merit?

Blocking a chip or other technology that's hard to vet is one thing.

Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and
public satellites? Does not really makes sense.

Now, of course these cases can and should be compared, but so far it seems
that citing national security issues in one case seems to be pretty baseless
excuse, whereas in the other case it seems to have some merit, even if the
actual ban of Chinese sourced components is ridiculous, because a lot of other
things are sourced/imported from China with the same or more severe espionage
potential.

~~~
justicezyx
> Blocking mapping when the same is already accessible from space via spy and
> public satellites? Does not really makes sense.

Then no one needs to map the road anyway, why bother?

~~~
i_cant_speel
The satellites don't provide enough information for self driving cars while
they _do_ provide enough information to be what China is considering a
national security concern.

------
gaius
Business as usual. The real question is why the West sits on its hands.

~~~
SteveGregory
What kind of response would you like to see from the West?

~~~
gaius
No mapping, no access to our markets for anything mapping related. Fair's
fair!

~~~
Eridrus
Are there enough Chinese companies doing mapping related things for this to be
relevant?

There are legitimate security reasons to restrict maps, so this seems unlikely
to be something easy to mobilise a larger trade war over.

~~~
Chaebixi
> Are there enough Chinese companies doing mapping related things for this to
> be relevant?

The sanctions wouldn't have need to be in the exact same area, just ones that
would cause equivalent pain.

------
bkor
The title implies a bit more than what the article says. Basically China
doesn't like their country to be mapped. As a result supposedly it's pretty
difficult to use most navigation software (e.g. Google Maps) within China.

China is NOT blocking it because it is self-driving (which is what you might
assume). China blocks pretty much any mapping.

I haven't been to China btw; I'm curious if OpenStreetMap would work.

~~~
greggman
I don't think its that simple and I'm curious what's really up.

I was just in Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou for a week. I purchased a Hong Kong
sim for my phone. Google and Facebook were not blocked when using tbat sim but
they were blocked on hotel WiFi.

So then trying Google Maps the location was always wrong. So wrong as to be
unusable. But, trying Apple Maps it was always correct. It seems like that
could only happen by regulation not technical means. The iPhone itself isn't
going to give different GPS info depending on which app is running is it ?
Which seems to means Google Maps' location is wrong because the Chinese
government told Google to make it wrong?

~~~
larrysalibra
Google Maps are intentionally offset in China to comply with regulations
because the global version doesn't have a license to operate in China:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_Chi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_China)

Apple Maps in China uses Autonavi maps which are licensed by the Chinese
government. Note that these maps are different than the maps seen in Apple
Maps outside of Mainland China.

Google and Facebook weren't blocked using your Hong Kong sim because roaming
sims tunnel data out of the country and connect to the internet there (like a
vpn!).

------
xen2xen1
Reminds me of how the Soviets supposedly bought different sized rail cars than
Europe so that it was harder to invade. Sounds more like a military
protectionist measure than an economic one.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
If you take a train from Beijing to Moscow, there is a gauge switch for the
cars once you hit Mongolia (they literally lift the cars up and switch the
wheels).

------
yingliu4203
It's a big surprise to me for a while that China Government blocks so many
U.S. internet services but no complaints from the U.S. government what only
complaints on old-type of unfair trading: steel, consumer goods, solar panels
etc. The digital economy is much a bigger deal.

~~~
majormajor
> The digital economy is much a bigger deal.

Is it really? Or would it all be compressible if someone else had complete
control over your manufacturing and hardware supply chain?

Strategically I think China having a bigger Amazon competitor than anyone else
pales in its relevance to the US compared to US infrastructure relying on
Chinese-produced components.

------
ChuckMcM
They are not wrong, in that detailed maps of streets can reveal more than
simply how to drive around. The combination of both detailed maps and vehicle
flow is even more telling in terms of economics and other activities.

It will be interesting to watch the ramifications of this sort of policy. As
China moves to become a leading economy with a high level of technology
distributed throughout the country, it will become harder to control
communications and information dispersal. Historically information access has
been anathema to their style of governing and I can't see how they can have
both.

~~~
dsl
The first film based government satellite imagery was 0.3 m/pixel, in the
1960s. It has only gotten better since then. (For comparison you can buy
GeoEye 1 data today commercially at 0.41 m/pixel) We also regularly fly
stealth collection aircraft over Chinese airspace.

At this point all the strategic things an invading army worries about (bridge
heights, strength of roads, width between buildings for turning tanks, etc)
can be obtained easily from overhead reconnaissance.

Hedge funds have been flying satellites to collect economic indicators
(traffic flow in retail spaces, fill levels in oil storage tanks, number of
ships in port, etc) since the '90s.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think you might be mis-remembering the history of satellite surveillance. In
the 60's you would be lucky if you got 3 meters per pixel (see
[https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/declass_1](https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/declass_1) for
additional details) That said, there have been claims of 0.1 m GSD
satellites[1]. That said, satellites cannot read street signs or business
names or capture WiFi hotspots or measure mean traffic density. Things that
'streetview' cars do all the time in order to create a better navigation
experience.

That information may or may not be interesting to the military but I can
imagine ways that it would be interesting to business and finance and
enforcement folks. It is perhaps opportunities for that sort of scrutiny that
is unwelcome?

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-image-resolution-
ke...](http://www.businessinsider.com/satellite-image-resolution-keeps-
improving-2015-10)

~~~
dsl
You are correct, CORONA only did 6 m. The replacement GAMBIT achieved 0.6 m by
1966, so not far off.

Obviously street level data is always better, but from a governmental
standpoint I don't believe China has effectively denied us anything we care
about. Wifi capture happens over other countries at 25,000 feet from MQ-9's,
so we could probably do it in China if we cared enough.

------
drwu
To be fair, mapping and geo measuring were forbidden in China even before self
driving becoming a popular topic.

Not only the foreign companies, even a lot of chinese companies are still not
allowed to do such measurements.

It was rather a military decision than an economic one.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_d...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China)

------
dis-sys
Is there any international law or treaty explicitly requiring countries to
allow their roads to be mapped by foreign countries/companies?

~~~
logfromblammo
Common sense, perhaps?

Large militaries will create their own up-to-date maps for every region of the
world where they could possibly expect to be operating. They will, of course,
keep strategic details in such maps secret, but with a bit of marginal effort,
the maps deemed to have low military relevance can also be sold to civilians
for their business purposes.

In order to keep a location secret now, it can't be visible from space. And it
can't have surface roads leading to it, or even change the surface
significantly from historic aerial photographs of the same location. And it
_definitely_ can't have radio signals coming out of it. That basically means
tunnels and submarines.

There exist people whose jobs are to stare at satellite images all day,
classify them, and draw shapes into a database. There is no longer any
credible military rationale for restricting by law the creation of surface
maps.

~~~
SamReidHughes
It eats up foreign military budgets.

~~~
logfromblammo
Those militaries can't trust your civil maps anyway, no matter how accurate
they may be in the parts where people actually use them. It's not like you're
going to have that featureless black square labeled as "ICBM silo" instead of
"dairy barn".

~~~
SamReidHughes
You can fairly efficiently check that a city's street layout is accurate by
random sampling. That's much less human labor.

China might also be concerned about internal security.

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3pt14159
If anyone has specific knowledge of specifics of self-driving cars I'm working
on an article and would love to bounce some questions off of you. My email and
GPG key are in my profile.

------
jxramos
For some reason this makes me think about that time I read that Russia
installed wider train tracks to prevent trains from other countries from
slipping in and entering the country.

------
saosebastiao
This is the sore spot economists often have with anti-trade politics. Recap:
people tend to only think of the benefits of trade in the _money_ they make
from trade, and not the products or ideas that they get when other countries
make money from us. There are benefits to both buying from and selling to
other countries, and by only considering one side, we make decisions that make
us poorer.

China doesn't want foreign companies making money from Chinese maps in China.
As a result, Chinese firms may make a tiny bit more money, but one billion
people have drastically worse maps.

~~~
majormajor
Economists often understate the value (especially to government and powerful
connected folks) of stability and control while focusing on things like
"massive number of people with objectively worse maps."

The potential-foreign-influenced-insurrection-to-better-maps exhange rate is
tough to pin down. ;)

------
SurrealSoul
I wonder how much of a cost the Autonavi license cost and if companies that
are starting the self-driving cars may be stifled in china for these licenses

------
juanmirocks
The leading position of China in AI and Quatum technology is very worrying. We
must adapt.

AI:
[https://www.ft.com/content/856753d6-8d31-11e7-a352-e46f43c58...](https://www.ft.com/content/856753d6-8d31-11e7-a352-e46f43c5825d)

Quantum tech: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/telecom/security/china-s...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-
talk/telecom/security/china-successfully-demonstrates-quantum-encryption-by-
hosting-a-video-call)

------
bluthru
Ugh, I really wish everyone contributed to OpenStreetMap and shared its
dataset. I don't want map accuracy to be a competitive advantage.

------
cohnnton
This is a typical China behavior: lie to WTO about how open its economy is,
then openly disregard the repriprocity with other countries and block foreign
companies from competing.

Thank goodness other countries are waking up:

"The United States, European Union and Japan vowed on Tuesday to work together
to fight market-distorting trade practices and policies that have fueled
excess production capacity, naming several key features of China’s economic
system."

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto/u-s-eu-japan-
sl...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-wto/u-s-eu-japan-slam-market-
distortion-in-swipe-at-china-idUSKBN1E62HA)

"US formally opposes China market economy status at WTO"

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-formally-opposes-china-
ma...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-formally-opposes-china-market-
economy-status-at-wto.html)

"TRUMP STARTS NEW WAR AGAINST CHINA OVER 'ECONOMIC AGGRESSION'"

[http://www.newsweek.com/trump-starts-new-war-against-
china-o...](http://www.newsweek.com/trump-starts-new-war-against-china-over-
economic-aggression-750502)

~~~
nemesisj
This type of negative opinion on China is shared all too often on HN, and it's
really irritating.

It's also untrue.

For example, lets go to the WTO itself and see the list of current disputes,
which is helpfully grouped by country:
[https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_countr...](https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/dispu_by_country_e.htm)

\- China is currently responding to 39 complaints.

\- The USA is responding to 132. Which is more than the entire EU (84) and
more than any other country.

It's really tiring to see the "China is a protectionist market" narrative
trotted out again and again, unchallenged, and is probably second only to the
"China is encroaching on the South China sea" narrative in terms of how
hypocritical both views are, _especially when espoused by Americans_.

~~~
dublinben
This is textbook "whataboutism" which has been used to deflect criticism since
Soviet times. It is wrong when China does it, and it is also wrong when the US
does it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

~~~
newfoundglory
No it isn't. It's responding to the claim that China is a terrible
protectionist place and the US has to make them stop, which implies that the
US has the moral high ground here.

