If the road grid in online maps of China doesn’t line up with the aerial/satellite imagery layer, Anastasia Bizyayeva explains in a Medium post earlier this year, it’s because China’s map data uses a different geodetic datum, GCJ-02, rather than WGS-84. “GCJ-02 is based on WGS-84, but with a deliberate obfuscation algorithm applied to it. The effect of this is that there are random offsets added to both latitude and longitude, ranging from as little as 50m to as much as 500m.” Chinese map companies are obliged to use GCJ-02 so their maps and imagery line up; outside China, companies can choose to use Chinese data and imagery and have alignment artifacts at the Chinese border, or use Chinese data with images aligned with WGS-84 and have the roads appear offset from the imagery. [Kottke]
Tag: China
China Accused of Erasing Uyghur Names from Villages in Xinjiang
Human Rights Watch accuses Chinese authorities of systematically renaming Uyghur villages in Xinjiang in a way that erases references to Uyghur religion, history or culture. According to their research, about 3,600 of 25,000 villages in Xinjiang were renamed between 2009 and 2023. “About four-fifths of these changes appear mundane, such as number changes, or corrections to names previously written incorrectly. But the 630, about a fifth, involve changes of a religious, cultural, or historical nature.” [BBC News]
New Leventhal Exhibition: ‘Heaven and Earth: The Blue Maps of China’
A new exhibition at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center, Heaven and Earth: The Blue Maps of China, focuses on two extraordinary Chinese maps from the early 19th century printed using Prussian blue pigment.
These maps were presented in an extraordinary format, on eight vertical sheets printed in the style of rubbings. Even more strikingly, they were rendered in a rich blue coloring. The pigment Prussian blue had recently begun to be produced in China, and these maps were amongst the first printed objects in East Asia to make use of the colorant—predating the famous use of Prussian blue by Japanese print artists soon after.
The blue maps were more than just visually astonishing. They also captured Chinese ideas about the relationship between terrestrial and celestial space, and still provide insight today into how Chinese scholars and artists conceptualized the world around them. Beautiful and powerful in equal measure, these blue maps capture details of a transitional moment in the history of China—and the wider world. This exhibition considers these two maps in the context of their production, consumption, and functionality, revealing them as unique objects in the global history of mapmaking.
The online version is full of interesting detail about the maps’ materials and production. The physical exhibition opened last weekend and runs until 31 August 2024. Free admission.
Behind the Scenes of the ‘Barbie’ Map
The Wall Street Journal provides some background to the map that got the Barbie movie into trouble in Vietnam, and the steps movie studios are increasingly taken to ensure that on-screen cartography doesn’t run afoul of other countries’ sensitivities. How to avoid a repeat of the Barbie controversy? “One proposal executives have discussed: having an employee inside the clearance department review every map featured on screen for potential problems or offenses. That’s a tough proposition, one employee noted, since the ‘Barbie’ map wasn’t processed by the Los Angeles team as a normal map at all.” (Link may be paywalled; see also the Apple News+ link—which granted is also paywalled.)
Previously: Philippine Censors Want ‘Barbie’ Blurred, Not Banned; The Nine-Dash Line Gets ‘Barbie’ Banned in Vietnam.
Philippine Censors Want ‘Barbie’ Blurred, Not Banned
The Philippines is just as keen as Vietnam is to ban films showing the nine-dash line, and has done so in the past. Nevertheless, the Philippine censor board has decided to allow the release of the forthcoming Barbie movie, but has asked Warner Bros. to blur the offending map, which is apparently only eight dashes (and therefore okay) and too cartoonish to be linked to a controversial line on a real map. Coverage: BBC News, Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, Variety.
That follows the Warner Bros. line; last Thursday Variety reported the Warner Bros. response to Barbie being banned in Vietnam: “‘The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing,’ a spokesperson for the Warner Bros. Film Group told Variety. ‘The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the “real world.” It was not intended to make any type of statement.’”
(Based on the screenshots I’ve seen, all it is is a dashed line extending east from a wildly inaccurate Asia; there are dashed lines elsewhere on the map that suggest routes more than borders.)
The Nine-Dash Line Strikes Again!
Netflix has removed Flight to You from its service in Vietnam, Variety reports, because the Chinese drama has scenes in nine episodes that show the nine-dash line on a map. The nine-dash line depicts China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, which Vietnam (among other countries) bitterly contests—to the point of banning depictions of said line in all media.
Previously: The Nine-Dash Line Gets ‘Barbie’ Banned in Vietnam.
The Nine-Dash Line Gets ‘Barbie’ Banned in Vietnam
The upcoming film Barbie has been banned in Vietnam, the Washington Post reports, because it apparently depicts a map showing the nine-dash line—the line that depicts China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. That line, and those claims, enclose the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam also claims as its territory. Blame Hollywood’s aversion to getting banned in the much larger Chinese market for not showing the nine-dash line, I guess; while Vietnam has a history of banning films for this reason (including, per the nine-dash line Wikipedia page, the recent films Abominable and Uncharted), it’s not remotely the only state that indulges in this sort of thing.
Hand-drawn Map Leads Man Abducted in Childhood to Birth Mother
Vice: “In an attempt to locate his birth family, a man who was abducted at the age of four resorted to drawing a map of his childhood hometown from memory and posting it online. The map went viral in China, resulting in the 37-year-old reconnecting this week with his long-lost mother, whom he is set to see for the first time in 33 years on Jan. 1.” [MAPS-L]
Apple Maps Asia-Pacific Update
Apple’s new maps have come to Australia [9to5Mac, MacRumors].
Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post reports that “iPhone and Apple Watch users in China can no longer see their geographic coordinates and elevation on the Compass app, according to Chinese media reports and user comments. However, information including bearings and general location are still available.”
And according to a report in The Information (paywall) that was summarized by John Gruber, back in 2014 or 2015 the Chinese State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping required Apple Maps to make the disputed Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands appear large even when zoomed out, and made the Apple Watch’s Chinese release contingent on that request—to which Apple acquiesced.
A Map of Every Chinese City
Inspired, he says, by Itchy Feet’s maps of Every European City and Every American City, Alfred Twu has come up with a Map of Every Chinese City. (Chinese version here.) Twu is no stranger to these parts: he worked on rail maps for California and the Northeast Corridor some years back.
Previously: Itchy Feet’s Map of Every European City; Itchy Feet’s Map of Every American City.
Blank Map Tiles Point to Locations of Xinjiang Detention Centres
As part of their investigation into China’s practice of detaining Uighur and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, Buzzfeed News journalists compared blanked-out areas in Baidu Maps with uncensored imagery from Google Earth and satellite data providers, and, after sorting through some 50,000 possible locations using custom web tools, built a database of some “428 locations in Xinjiang bearing the hallmarks of prisons and detention centers.” This article explains the methodology.
Blurring or removing map data to prevent people from seeing something important or sensitive is a pretty loud signal that there’s something important or sensitive to see there. Some five million Baidu Maps tiles were masked in Xinjiang alone—there’s a lot the Chinese government considers sensitive—which made the unmasking considerably harder. But not impossible.
Emissions Drop Due to Coronavirus Outbreak
As you may have seen elsewhere, the coronavirus pandemic is having an impact on air pollution, as countries shut down human and economic activity in an attempt to deal with the outbreak. Take nitrogen dioxide. Tropospheric NO2 density decreased significantly over China between January and February, and the same seems to be happening in northern Italy, which normally has some of the most severe air pollution in Europe. See the ESA’s animation:
More broadly, try this online map, which compares NO2 emissions before and after 20 February 2020 anywhere on the planet. [Maps Mania]
Previously: Mapping Nitrogen Dioxide Pollution.
New Interactive Coronavirus Map from the University of Washington
Another interactive map tracking novel coronavirus infections, this one from University of Washington geographer Bo Zhao. Like the Johns Hopkins map (previously), it compiles information from multiple sources.
The country-level data is collected from WHO, while the data of each province in China is collected from multiple sources such as China’s NHC, Mapmiao and Baidu. Notably, we also refer to CDC to verify the virus spreading status in the U.S. To make a timely data and map updates, we collect the data every 4 hours, and verify the data quality per day. In addition, we plan to provide finer-scale data from China (the county level), U.S. (the state level) and Canada (the province level) in the next version.
More at UW News. [Geography Realm]
Previously: Tracking the Wuhan Coronavirus; The Washington Post Maps the Spread of the New Coronavirus.
Tracking the Wuhan Coronavirus
Johns Hopkins University’s CSSE has created an interactive map and online dashboard to track the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. Details at their blog post:
The case data visualized is collected from various sources, including WHO, U.S. CDC, ECDC, China CDC (CCDC), NHC and DXY. DXY is a Chinese website that aggregates NHC and local CCDC situation reports in near real-time, providing more current regional case estimates than the national level reporting organizations are capable of, and is thus used for all the mainland China cases reported in our dashboard (confirmed, suspected, recovered, deaths). U.S. cases (confirmed, suspected, recovered, deaths) are taken from the U.S. CDC, and all other country (suspected and confirmed) case data is taken from the corresponding regional health departments. The dashboard is intended to provide the public with an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds, with transparent data sources.
The data is also downloadable. [Geography Realm/Maps Mania]
Meanwhile, the Washington Post has created a series of maps showing where the outbreak started and the nearby areas at risk.
Previously: The Washington Post Maps the Spread of the New Coronavirus.
Update, 31 Jan: Maps from the New York Times.
The Washington Post Maps the Spread of the New Coronavirus
The Washington Post has mapped the spread of the new strain of coronavirus, which appeared last month in Wuhan and has since spread. They’ll be updating the map, and this won’t be the only map tracking the disease, so this isn’t the final word on the subject.