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.
One can question their methods. Still why should they let foreign companies map their country? Technology and information assets like everything else. They might be the natural resources of the 21st century. And a lot of countries might be giving up their chance of becoming the next Norway without even knowing it.
Look, I'm not saying you are a paid shill, but 2 cents worth of thinking would lead you to the truth:
Any self-driving car can map out your roads. Saying "no road mapping for your [future] self driving cars" is silly. It could be boiled down to "no camera borne cars" which necessitates no self-driving cars.
And if they don't want our self-driving cars I don't want theirs.
> And if they don't want our self-driving cars I don't want theirs.
Not about this particular example but we know that’s not how it works; people buy whatever is cheap so not wanting something on invidual level works if you are strong and willing to spend 2-3-4-n x the money, but in general people will just buy. In the 80s many people said it about Japanese cars and yet everyone bought them eventually because cheap and good. Even in China, where many people have the old hate against Japan (far stronger than your feelings most likely as the Japenese did horrible things here), they still drive Toyota etc and they see the issue with that but it’s cheaper than German and better than Chinese, so what can you do.
I don't see how it silly. Autonomous cars are going to be a game of information. I don't think it is in any nations interest to give that information away. If autonomous cars, artificial intelligence or any other technology is going to be as big as people say (or even just as big as computers, software and information is these days) then it's going to be a large part of the future wealth of a nation. Just like oil or even regular car manufacturing is today.
Also I think you severely overestimate the subtlety of Chinese propaganda.
I kind of agree. Whether or not you disagree with their strategy of blocking foreign tech companies, it's lead to an explosion of major chinese tech companies.
Europe doesn't have a Google, Facebook, or Amazon, because the major US companies got there early enough to dominate the entire market. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's a good result for those countries.
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?
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.
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.
You're citing firms who have direct ties to the government. I would expect China to also block Lockheed Martin from acquiring Chengdu Aerospace - and nobody would bat an eye.
What the US government HASN'T done is say "sorry ZTE, you can't sell ANY phones in the US because national security". There's a very, very big difference.
You probably shouldn't cite Huawei, who was found guilty of outright theft of Cisco technology and software (literally copied it down to the bugs--it's how Cisco proved their case) when you are trying to cite examples of "victims" of protectionism.
Huawei are the poster child case you cite in favor of protecting your domestic companies.
Well, at least US/EU allow Chinese companies to create local companies operating internet services in their regions without insisting on a locally-owned "joint venture" with a local company owning the majority of the company.
I think the US/EU should retaliate on this particular policy for China specifically. This is way overdue.
China is responsible for the largest theft and transfer of wealth in the history of the world. They have stolen trade secrets, ignored IP and copied everything they possibly could and can all at the expense of Western Tax Payers who funded a century of research and development.
All Western companies with offices and factories in China have been compromised. From their financial records to trade secrets, all have been stolen by the Chinese.
In the late 90's my employer (leading technology company) implemented an IDS. We were stunned at the amount of internal attack activity aimed at our Accounting, HR and Research areas of the company all coming from our Chinese office and Factory. It had been completely infiltrated by Chinese military at every level.
That is true in the sense that I would rather you be here and use the site as intended.
That requires containing your uncivil impulses and not venting them into the commons, the same way you wouldn't set fires or drop litter in a city square. When people break this rule it triggers more of the same from others. We're all responsible for not letting that happen.
Because "the west" is not some monolithic entity and some very very powerful and profitable businesses continue to make very large quantities of cash by working with/in China. A trade war with China would lead to a huge increase in the cost of goods, and many business would go belly-up since they are predicated on the very low costs of labour and high rate of exploitation of Chinese workers.
If applied aggressively it would lead to a very large recession or depression, and maybe even war.
Stop seeing countries as single coherent actors. The best thing to do is for as many governments as possible to stay out of as many people's affairs as possible.
Just because the Chinese government is stopping Alice from mapping Chinese roads doesn't mean your government should stop Bob from buying Chinese maps. Why should your government punish Bob just because the Chinese government punished Alice? Alice and Bob don't even know each other.
Like it or not, countries do exist and are the framework on which commerce is built. Bob will need to shop elsewhere and Alice will need to confront her government over their policies costing her lost sales (if she is Chinese)
Western governments have decided that they are better off sitting on their hands than starting a trade war. I think there are good reasons to believe that is true.
This is not a trade war. This is an example of a country pursuing a protectionist policy program. A trade war would result if the west retaliated by creating new tariffs or bans on Chinese products as a response. That would be worse for the west than simply ignoring the protectionism, and that's why the west hasn't done it. If western countries could become better off by screwing China they would certainly do it right away.
Frankly the world has never had free trade; it's just had freer trade in recent years than in the past. There are constant disputes in the WTO about tariffs, subsidies, and other protectionist measures implemented by western countries as well as China. Free-trade deals reduce barriers to trade in some areas and increase them in others. This mapping situation is just another routine trade dispute.
No, it literally is business. China sells products in the West the value of which derives from there being good mapping data of the West. Banning this same data being collected there is an unfair distortion of the market.
Last time I checked, we don't live there. There's no natural right to do business anywhere, well, at least if you are not a citizen of that state - however, even that's not true here thanks to a combination of licenses, regulations, taxes, etc.
Like, so many people on HN worship "the market" like it matters beyond our tiny, irrelevant life spans, it's horrific.
If I lease my apartment to another person on Airbnb, I am under no obligation to lease my apartment to them or at all.
The fact that we take advantage of their exports does not compel them to do the same.
So, like, don't buy Chinese products taking advantage of Western mapping data, but do so quietly since, you know, they don't have to do anything economically that they don't want to do.
Lots of people made a ton of money transferring Western manufacturing and technology to China.
Most educated Western adults were raised in an environment of well-intended anti-racism propaganda, so are unable to think clearly about any topic that involves race in any way.
The second statement is not dependent on the first, although it is related.
There is also quite literally nothing racist about it, but you've proven my point quite well (in that you see racism where it doesn't exist, a specific example of the more general point I was making).
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.
Agree. Misleading title. It is not specific to China, by the way. South Korea doesn't like that either. Think of it as a privilege, not a right, just like driving.
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?
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!).
Correction: They block pretty much any mapping not done by Chinese companies. I could navigate around hutongs (old windy neighborhoods which aren't always easily mapped) with QQ Maps without a problem.
As I have occasionally worked with geodetic coordinate conversions in the past, that GCJ-02 datum sounds like an incredibly bad idea.
The worst accidental mistake I have ever made with respect to geodetic coordinates, relating to accumulating floating-point round-off errors, absolutely pales in comparison to the sheer idiocy of introducing errors into your geodetic datum on purpose.
Look, people, satellite photography exists now. That objective reality maps really well onto a coordinate systems based on a smooth ellipsoid. If you intentionally make your domestically-produced map products harder to use for people in your own country, they will buy better maps from other countries. If your goal is to make your 50 most important military assets harder to find, and in the process make it harder to find a billion civilian assets, you're going to lose more money just paying all those delivery drivers to get lost for 20 minutes than it would cost to rebuild those 50 military assets 10 times over.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
I believe you are live in Silicon Valley. You remind me a story from Billions that how local people fool the Wall Street traders or Hedge funds you described to estimate the factory's outcome by just those Satellite photos.
If you believe Satellite photos are enough, why the article still complain Chinese government's behavior.
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.
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".
No. But the agreements of the WTO support the equal treatment for every company anywhere. The Chinese government only permits its own Chinese companies to profit, while block basically all foreign ones.
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.
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.
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.
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. ;)
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
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."
- 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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure I understand.. are you saying that China is NOT a protectionist market? There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
It's true that such a view doesn't disregard the often equally protectionist approaches of countries like the US, yes, but the former can't be denied just because of the latter.
A successful WTO claim against America is tantamount to fiscal settlement. The same is far from true for China. They routinely rip off foreign companies. Google "Nortel China hack" and come back to me about something equivalent that the Americans have done. The Americans aren't angels, but they aren't demons either and China does not respect international norms or laws.
I agree with your general sentiment and how China's gaming the system.
I'd also be very cautious about assuming the 'system' (WTO) even pretending to be fair or democratic or not conducting economic wars of aggression against poorer members on a daily basis such as the wiping out of agricultural markets in Central America via US farming subsidies etc.
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.