This video was made possible by Wix. Start building your website today for free
at wix.com/go/HAI. So, first things first, this video is not
about the hugely controversial and politically divisive places that you probably assume it
is based off the title. Namely, this, this, this, and this. So let’s say you’re you, and you’re
on a road trip heading from the bustling city of Shenzhen, China to visit the beautiful
Lam Tsuen Park in Hong Kong. You wake in your room at the Sunflower hotel,
and head over to the Northeast Dumpling House to start your day with some delicious steamed
pork buns—the breakfast of champions. You drop off a letter at the Fulian Post Agency,
make a quick stop at the Bank of China to get a few extra kuai for the taxi, and then
you’re on your way to Lam Tsuen park. But wait, what happened to the road? Why is it split in two? Are you in a dream? Did Leonardo Di Caprio hack into your mind? Let’s turn on the satellite map. Wait, why are you in the middle of the Shenzhen
Bay? And come to think of it, why was that bank
in the middle of a lake? And why was that dumpling restaurant in the
middle of a busy intersection? Why was the post office in the middle of a
forest? And why was your hotel in a river? The good news is, you’re not going crazy,
and Leonardo Di Caprio is far away, on a yacht with models. Your map is just wrong. The bad news is that you can’t fix your
map, because every map of China is wrong. The 1992 Surveying and Mapping Law of the
People’s Republic of China makes any surveying or mapping of mainland China illegal without
specific authorization by the Chinese government. And it’s enforced—from 2006 to 2011 alone,
the Chinese government brought 40 cases against people who tried making maps—everyone from
Coca-Cola to three British geology students trying to conduct research on fault lines
which is definitely one of the lamest ways to get arrested—image being in prison, having
Marco the Machete Murderer ask you what you’re in for, and your answer is, “cartography.” Not exactly hardcore, but, according to the
text of the law, the Chinese government believes that keeping its geographic data secret is
important for “development of the national economy, the building up of national defense,
and progress of the society.” And they’ve gone to pretty extreme lengths
to make sure that nobody knows where anything in China actually is. There are only 14 companies that have been
granted permission to make maps of China, and all 14 are Chinese—not a single foreigner
has been allowed to map the country. That means that companies like Google have
to partner with Chinese government-approved mapping companies, like AutoNavi, in order
to have maps of China at all. But you might be wondering, if all these companies
are allowed to make maps of China, then why are all the maps wrong? Well, that’s because the companies make
accurate maps, and then they intentionally mess them up. You see, most countries in the world use a
GPS coordinate system called WGS-84. WGS stands for World Geodesic System, and
84 is because the system was established in, you guessed it, 1584….no, it was 1984. But instead of WGS-84, China uses a system
called GCJ-02. The GCJ-02 system is like the WGS-84 system
but with one major difference. It takes in all of the accurate GPS coordinates
that government-authorized mapmakers have and feeds it through an algorithm that intentionally
messes them up—randomly moving coordinates 50-500 meters away from where they actually
are. On the one hand, that isn’t a huge difference,
but, you know what they say, “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” That’s what the judge said after my last
knife throwing show, but with the Chinese maps, “close” makes a big difference if
you’re trying to drive here, over the Jiaozhou Bridge, and your map takes you here, into
the Jiaozhou Bay. But let’s say that you don’t know your
way around China and you want to fix your map so that it is accurate. Well that’s a lot easier said than done
because the GCJ system doesn’t shift everything in the same direction or the same distance
away. If it just made everything 20 meters further
east, you could fix it by just shifting your whole map 20 meters west. Easy, problem solved. But the algorithm is designed so that each
individual location is shifted a different random distance in a different random direction,
which means that piecing it all back together is a lot more complicated. The only way to make things look right is
to make the entire map, including the satellite map, use the GCJ system, which, for example,
is what Google China does. So if you go to google.cn, you’ll notice
that the Bank of China is no longer in a lake which is great for the Bank of China’s foot
traffic, but doesn’t mean the map is fixed. You see, the bank isn’t on land now because
the satellite map is right. It’s on land because the satellite map is
now also wrong. So instead of google.com, which puts an accurate
satellite image over an inaccurate map, google.cn puts an inaccurate satellite image over the
inaccurate map. So everything lines up, but it’s all still
completely wrong. The coordinates it gives you for a location
are just not the real ones of that location. It’s like fixing your wrong answer on your
geography test by crossing out part of your textbook and writing in that actually, the
capital of Florida is Florida City. So if on Google China, you go to a border
between mainland China and an area that uses a correct GPS system, the images don’t match
up. If we go to that same bridge from earlier
on Google.cn, on the border between mainland China and Hong Kong, the bridge is split in
two. That’s because it’s trying to match up
the accurate satellite images of Hong Kong with the inaccurate satellite images of mainland
China. So in conclusion, there’s no real way to
know where anything in China actually is. If you want people to know where you are,
and how they can hire you, the best way to do so is with a personal website through Wix. So, I just re-did the HAI website with Wix
and despite being only a few biological steps away from a monkey I managed to make this
which I think looks pretty good. Wix makes it super easy to build a website. You can have them make it for you with their
artificial design intelligence, build your own with one of their 500 designer-made templates,
or if you want to get really fancy you can even code in your own modifications. Summed up, Wix is crazy simple but crazy customizable
so you can build exactly what you want easily. Best of all, you can start building your website
today for free at wix.com/go/HAI.
Watching this video I wondered what would happen if people collaborated together to map China. Turns out they have, and you can find OpenStreetMap data that would allow you to navigate China using any standard GPS device.
So there are accurate maps, the question is why companies like Google don't use this accurate data.
I don't know the answer, but my guess is that it comes down to legal issues. Integrating this data into their maps could piss off China.
Just seems like a waste to me. I understand why this stuff made sense back in the days before satellites. But now every government has an accurate map of China, only normal people who pose no threat to the nation are affected by this.
The absolute criminals...
They use their own satellite geotracking technology (the US-funded one available worldwide is called GPS) and ban all others by rendering them useless; Russia also has this with Glonass, and Europe is going to launch their own one. Commercial phones available in the western world don't have the right sensor for the Chinese one and viceversa, but Chinese maps are right nonetheless and can be used normally if one uses only the internet connection or the wifi antenna for geotracking (I used maps me and the wechat maps while I was there). Also, Chinese geotracking has the same problem when used in western countries (Mobike always tracks me completely wrong)
Is this the Wendover Productions guy?
Doesn't Openstreetmaps have accurate maps of China made by volunteers?
But isn't a map of EVERYWHERE just slightly wrong?
Hold up. This doesn’t make sense. If Chinese google has matching street and satellite data, and the street data is the only thing wrong with the US google, then all that US google needs to do is plot the difference between the Chinese and US street data, and now it’s fixed. That’ll take, like, a week max, with all the computing power that Google has available. The only reason the Chinese google maps are “wrong” is because Google doesn’t want to annoy them.
So what do you do if you're traveling in Chyna then
Wait, if anyone can access both versions of Google Maps, isn't it entirely feasible to map out the distortion? The biggest obstacle for any rando to try would be Google hassling you about downloading their data. Even if you can't reverse-engineer the exact hashing algorithm, you can publish the two-channel displacement map.