There's a couple of regulations for selling GPS enabled devices in China (I am a software guy on a major PND manufacturer with products being sold in China).
- The map data is scrambled (GPS coordinates are encrypted).
- To correlate a GPS position with the map data, you plug the HW position through an encryption library (which you have to compile in a specific government building in Beijing).
- Border drawing is strongly regulated: no border line between Mainland China and Taiwan, Tibet is of course China, South East Asia Islands can't have border lines drawn and Kashmir is a big thing also with border lines.
- You can't show pure GPS coordinates
- You can't include a number or POIs in your map (mostly government buildings/facilities).
As a note, India as a certain degree of insanity as well: You can't export a map. Launching a PND there involved shipping a bunch of map technicians there to actually make sure we never got a map outside of India...
so what you're calling scrambling/encryption is actually a transformation? the encryption library transforms the coordinates so that they match the distorted map?
what is the advantage of this? couldn't an attacker get a copy of the software? is there some kind of real-time authorisation step so that they can disable the transformation or change it?
[edit: thanks; wasn't thinking you thought it a good idea, just curious for more info]
I'm not questioning the advantage (in my view it's a small roadblock if you're motivated enough to actually get the data) just stating an inane regulation...
On most maps published in the West, Tibet is shown as an integral part of the territory of the People's Republic of China, even though plenty of Americans drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers on their cars. That is the GOVERNMENTAL position of the United States at present, that Tibet is part of the territory of China. (Of course historical Tibet includes regions outside the current boundaries of the Tibet Autonomous Region administrative division of China, including most of the territory of what is called Qinghai Province and quite a bit of land in Sichuan Province.)
The case of Taiwan is even more confusing. A world globe I have from a decade ago, commercially published by a private business corporation rather than officially published, shows Taiwan and the mainland territories of China in the same color. (Usually this globe distinguishes different countries by different colors.) However, the globe also marks the location of both Beijing and Taipei (so spelled) with a star symbol indicating a capital city, suggesting that Taipei is the seat of a national government. United States law under the Taiwan Relations Act strikes a delicate balance between agreeing with the original assertion of both the P.R.C. and R.O.C. regimes that there is one China and Taiwan is a part of China and the current facts on the ground that China (the P.R.C.) and Taiwan (the island of Taiwan and various outlying islands, including some that historically were part of Fujian Province) are under distinct national administrations.
Here is my perspective on Taiwan grossly simplified.
A bunch of Han Chinese moved to the island. The Dutch established a small colony there. Japan took over. Post-WW2 they were given independence from Japan. The pre-communist leader of China moved to Taiwan and took over politically. The KMT party ruled until recently, when Taiwan peacefully transitioned to a democracy and now has two main parties.
There is nothing in Taiwan under Chinese control. They have their own government, constitution, military, their own passports that are recognized worldwide, etc. However, there is a looming threat that China will attempt to take over which drives mandatory military service, and tight relations with the US.
But it's an interesting question how much of that is really a facade and how much it's relevant.
Obviously, Taiwan has no plans to reconquer the mainland any time soon. However, PRC China threatens that if Taiwan formally declares independence it's back to a shooting war.
So yes, Taiwan still maintains governors for the areas of the mainland (last I heard they're all very old as they obviously are not standing for reelection back in their home district). This surprises people when they first learn of it.
It seems to a lot of outsiders like it is more about preserving the very carefully kept status quo than it is about a serious territorial claim.
But I don't really know that much about it. This topic tends to bring out strong opinions in people on one side or the other and I haven't come across many people who do know both sides who will chat freely.
That is oversimplified to the point of inaccuracy.
Taiwan is a democracy, and one of the major parties firmly opposes any concept of Chinese rule and seeks recognition of Taiwan. The other party leans towards being the sole leader of all of China. However in practice (being currently elected) they just improve economic ties with China while opposing unification or formal recognition of Taiwan.
The PRC sees Taiwan as a province of China that they should rule, as you mentioned.
It's also worth noting that Human Beings are territorial animals, and there are hundreds if not thousands of disputes like this all over the world. Cypress and Kashmir come to mind, but there are plenty more.
What this reminds me of is USA's inane attempt to control encryption technology. Every state is used to controlling information, the tech is just moving too quickly for bureaucracies to even respond.
I'm sure there are thousands of Chinese engineers with careers transforming map coordinates. You don't want to put these people out of a job, do you?
Back in the early 90's (in the US) I had a friend who was a college student from China. In the common area of her dorm there was a huge wall-size Rand-McNally map of the world. We were looking it over.
"There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan."
"You know Taiwan is really not that big." she said.
"What do you mean?"
"Map makers show it larger than it really is in order to exaggerate its importance."
I was a little weirded out by that idea. This girl was pretty intelligent, she seemed to know some math and logical thinking. She was in the process of becoming a CPA.
For better or worse I responded with practical analysis: "How would that even work? You and I could go buy maps right now for navigating ships and airplanes, those would have to be accurate in order to function. We could compare them to this one and if they are noticeably different we could complain and the company that made the map would lose face. Why would Rand-McNally give a shit about the political importance of Taiwan anyway, enough to risk their own credibility?"
"They just do. All map makers do this." She would not be convinced.
those would have to be accurate in order to function
The most common form of map, Mercator projection, greatly distorts the area of land around the equator, and makes northernly (& southerly) lands appear much larger. It makes Canada, Greenland, Alaska, et al. appear quite large compared to Africa & South America. But those areas are much larger.
The Mercator projection isn't a good example of a map in which visual distortion and a lack of navigational utility go hand in hand.
Indeed, the hole point of the projection was to make navigation easier by allowing rhumb lines (the shortest distances between two points on a curved surface) to be charted as perfectly straight lines on a two-dimensional map. From these lines of constant bearing, mariners could work out the precise - and constant - angle they should maintain in relation to the pole star in order to get from one point to another.
Without a reliable method for establishing longitude at sea, 17th Century navigators could never be exactly sure how far along their courses they were, but at least they could know that they were heading in the right direction. Given the level of uncertainty involved in these enterprises, this one piece of (relatively) hard and verifiable data was extraordinarily important, making the accuracy of the projection, and the mathematically - if not visually - correct placement of shorelines within it especially important.
Unfortunately, the iconic value of the Mercator projection has vastly outlived its utility - or at least, the common awareness of the once formidable navigational problems it addressed. Far from seeing it as a brilliant technical solution, it is often seen through a purely political filter that views its strengths as weaknesses, while completely missing the map's actual intent.
Let's not get mixed up about what the projection did and didn't do. As you point out, the importance of rhumb lines comes not from the fact that the thing they keep constant -- the bearing (with respect to north/south) -- was something that could actually be measured.
Rhumb lines are not, however, the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. Those would be great circles. In particular, note that along a rhumb line one can never reach the north or south pole. Indeed, rhumb lines are dependent on your choice of poles, which the actual shortest course clearly cannot be!
Argh. Misnegation from earlier version. "As you point out, the importance of rhumb lines comes from the fact that..." -- there shouldnt' be a not there.
You are (it seems intentionally) ignoring the point that Mercator's area distortion doesn't dangerously mislead in navigation, quite the contrary. Or, if that isn't true, please name some cases where navigators were messed up because they thought Greenland looked bigger than it was in area.
Unless you use a globe, every projection onto a flat rectangular surface distorts.
Now how does that make more plausible the claim that world map makers are inflating the area of Taiwan on purpose?
Really? Seemed like he was simply pointing out an error on my part. Don't see where Taiwan enters that at all.
More to the point, there's a big difference between distorting scale in a way that's mathematically consistent throughout the projection (i.e. one in which you preserve shape or position at scale's expense), and simply fudging the scale in a particular spot.
Really? I think you meant rhumb lines. :) They're both important, just for different reasons; and it's rhumb lines that are easily visible on a Mercator projection and that were so useful for navigation.
Mercator distortion has nothing to do with the anecdote in the parent post. There the allegation was of deliberate inaccuracy, which renders a map non-functional for most purposes.
All 2D map projections produce either distortion or discontinuity. Neither of these affects a map's functionality in the way that outright inaccuracy does.
Oh yes, I agree that this is an example of purely the geometry, not a political attempt. But I know people who , upon seeing the distortion, were surprised at how many maps were "wrong". This shows that you can't rely on the market to weed out inaccurate maps. After all, a map that had the south at the top (rather than the bottom) would be viewed as "wrong" and would be penalized with poor sales.
The idea that the market will always produce the best map is not true.
As an aside, I have often wondered at the way North=up became, and remains, completely universal. An upside-down globe "looks" as wrong to me as an upside-down portrait. Obviously there's no reason this must be so; it's nothing more than familiarity with the shapes of the continents from a particular perspective.
Some day, I'd like to have a globe or a big mercator-type map with South at the top (i.e. with the written labels upside-down from normal), and see how long it would take to become accustomed to it.
"you can't rely on the market to weed out inaccurate maps" is a misleading statement, particularly in the context where people are contending that the size of Taiwan has intentionally been inflated worldwide for political reasons.
THAT kind of inaccuracy bears almost no resemblance to gripes which emerge about the tradeoffs in 2d map projections regarding inevitable (as opposed to highly arbitrary, political) shape and area distortions.
Maps which have south at the top ARE sold and do just fine in the Southern Hemisphere.
The point actually remains that the market has not rewarded any maps which have the kind of distortions which would be required to specifically and artificially inflate the size of Taiwan relative to China, without much affecting anything else.
There are a bunch of parallel conversations spawned from this 2 year old blog post. For reference, here's the area the author talked about in current google maps:
The locations are all still off and they're consistently off by an offset throughout Shanghai. There might be some deliberate dishonesty by map makers in China, but I don't think this is evidence of it - I think this is just an inaccurate projection. If you want to make bad maps to confuse people - first, that's probably pretty impossible with current information systems, even in China, and second, this would be a really bad attempt at it.
Yes I was familiar with that at the time, but I don't recall if it was mentioned in our particular discussion. In any case, Taiwan is relatively far South in its region so the projection effect would tend to be reduced. It would actually have the effect of making mainland China look larger.
Are you suggesting that in this case the blogger is similarly misinformed or deluded?
I don't think it's unreasonable to think that China is manipulating its map data, particularly when other people here in the mapping industry have already said this is well known in their field.
I think the gp is telling an anecdote that is an interesting example of the difficulty that exists in China for certain things, and in no way states that the blogger is misinformed or deluded.
An interesting anecdote from my side, though not necessarily map-related. But in the same theme as gp. This summer, I was volunteering teaching English to rural kids in China. One of the kids kept writing this big message on blackboards and stuff that Osama bin Laden was still alive. One of the local volunteers read what he was writing and was upset at him for fooling around so much. Later, I asked her what's up, and she told me what he was writing.
WTF.
So in the team meeting later that night, I talk with my fellow volunteers about this, and wonder if I have some kind of crazy kid on my hands. Then the Chinese volunteers told me not to worry about it, he's just writing stuff. I'm like, "What do you mean, how do you know?" Then they started talking about how people distrust the government these days, are unhappy, etc. I'm like, "What the heck does that have to do with anything?"
Turns out that all over the Chinese web, this was a really popular meme where Chinese youth displayed their sarcasm at anything the government said. Even things that they knew to be true could not be true because the government said it. It was only a meme, much like the Hitler videos we see on Youtube.
Scared me for a day.
But suffice it to say, people in China aren't so trusting of what their nation says as before. Living here, I hear it from my colleagues and friends every day. That being said, there's very little right now that they can do to voice their opinion because it's still a touchy atmosphere.
Seems more likely that Chinese maps make Taiwan smaller, and when people in China point to the differences between locally made maps and foreign maps, they are told that foreign map makers are playing some sort of anti-China political game.
Or, people have it ingrained in them that Taiwan is small, and they all know that Chinese map-makers are politically motivated, so they assume that all map-makers are equally politically motivated.
My take on it at the time was that she had been convinced at some point that all Western maps were made that way for political reasons. I didn't get the sense that she was reacting to the size on the map we were perceiving.
You knew her disposition. (You were her friend). What was the goal of that comment, to incent a fruitless political discussion?
Edit: Whoa there. Why the downvotes? I am genuinely curious why the parent decided it was a good idea to stoke that discussion. I have friends whose political views are far from mine, and there are just DMZ topics that I don't dare bring up. For example, a discussion about the Federal Reserve and Operation Twist would be fruitless with my Libertarian friends, who just have a different opinion on that, which I believe is irreconcilable. I would say that's the same situation with Taiwan-strait politics.
You say that, but you've clearly never gone up against an adversary with a complete lack of boundaries around what they'll do to achieve their political goals. Politics often manipulates facts.
There are a lot of topics I'd love to say aren't open to political debate, because I personally consider them axioms of basic sanity, but the existence of people who disagree unfortunately leaves the debate open.
It seems like there is little tactical payoff in doing this, as large, foreign militaries would already have detailed, accurate maps covering the whole world, China included. I bet this is an internal-resistance oriented policy.
Even then, if there were an internal-resistance movement that was well organized enough, they could get around this stuff. Seems more like it's there to keep some bureaucrats employed and possibly to prevent lone-wolf resistance 'fighters' who might not be well organized/smart enough to get around these measures.
There are several tools that allow you to compare OpenStreetMap and Google Maps by overlaying partially on the other. Here's one of the area in question:
How is this news? I work in the digital mapping world and there everybody knows this. You cannot even get the data out of China, all data has to stay within China and if you want to do map business in China, you can only do it through a joint-venture with a Chinese company.
[edit] BTW: India is similar, they are not scrambling the map, but it cannot leave the country either. So as a map-maker you have to have a local company there in order to do business.
Requiring legitimate incorporation in a foreign country in order to do business there (typically through partnership with a domestic firm) is also not unique to China or map making.
No, but doing so in order to ensure state control of information for propaganda purposes is certainly a feature of tyrannical governments, China being a particularly strong example.
Getting detailed maps in lots of coutries is difficult. Lived in Ethiopia for a while, which up until 1993 was governed by a communist regime. Around 2000 it was still law that in order to get maps on a 1:10000 scale you needed a government license/permit and could only be bought at the "Mapping Authority". 1:100000 maps on the other hand were available everywhere.
Lots of other countries have restrictions for instance on key bridges and other infrastructure, disallowing access, pictures, stopping, etc.
Historically maps have been closely guarded military secrets. As late as the Renaissance possession of the wrong map could get you executed by European powers, even in peacetime. Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim is largely based on the true story of British surveying and map making in India and central Asia.
AFAIK, military maps are still secret in most places. This is because they contain information that cannot be easily derived from hi-res satellite imagery. Stuff like "how much weight can this bridge support", "how deep is this ford", etc. This is important if you are trying to, say, drive tanks through unfamiliar terrain.
So I really don't get why they would make them secret.
It's helpful to know the ford depths of a river crossing before you get there with your tanks.
Take a fanciful example. One could not, say, send a U.S. Army survey team to measure the depth of the Orne before the allies landed in Normandy. The Germans would really object to that kind of thing.
I developed a project in China using OSM and it's certainly not blocked there (i. e.: The host is accessible).
The problem of OSM in China is its limited data-set. For example, in the city I developed the project OSM had only the major streets, and the map was quite old.
Probably because private mapping is prohibited and there is no public-domain map data.
from paxswill's link:
"According to the Surveying and Mapping Law of the People's Republic of China, private surveying and mapping activities are illegal in mainland China."[0]
For the record there is no public domain map data in a lot of countries in Europe. The USA has the sensible approach of 'all government data (incl. maps) should be public domain'. In Europe the state owned mapping organisations do the mapping and claim full copyright on the maps & data.
The 'illegal to make your own maps' is, obviously, not the case in EU
> In Europe the state owned mapping organisations do the mapping and claim full copyright on the maps & data.
This is true here in Switzerland. You have to pay quite a bit for our maps. I think it's a good thing actually, because their quality is worth the price. They provide extreme detail even in very remote locations (well, remote for us at least ;)). And for doing quick lookups, there's a free online-map at http://map.geo.admin.ch/, which also provides a lot of statistical data.
Yep. OSM was set up by some people from the UK and the OS knows the location of everything that's more than about 20cm big and nailed down (from planning applications & surveying), so they have lots of high quality data.
However most people/businesses don't need that.
Just look at Google maps & OpenStreetMap. They don't have submetre accuracy, however there are still quite useful to people and businesses.
Both Google Maps and Nokia OVI work perfectly fine on my E71 here in China. I guess they just get that encryption library linked inside so the position of my locations always match the roads and buildings on the map. On the other hand, the satellite images in Google Maps do have an offset, which means Google has not redraw the satellite images. Either because Google is unwilling to do that, or, as machinagod said, they cannot take the encryption library back to their image server to do the recalculation.
Useful information. That explains why I was having so much trouble navigating with mapping software on my Android phone when I visited. Now, I wonder if there's a workaround.
Could it be true also for the some parts of Europe ? When i was in Belgium ( Brugge ) and Germany ( Nürnberg, Berlin ) i used google maps a lot. And i realised some streets, not all, looks longer or shorter than others on the map.
In the USA, map data from the government is public domain. In Europe this is not the case. You have to pay for map data from the government. As a result Google Maps is usually based off 3rd party map data like TeleAtlas, who use things like aerial imagery & guesswork. This can result in not 100% accurate maps, so there can be mistakes and errata like that. That's much more likely than government control.
Generally buying national map data is expensive in europe.
The naming of streets is also quite complex, if the street has been there for 1000years then it's likely that various of layers of government aren't quite in synch with what they are calling it.
so if google maps just uses a free public domain source it might not match what the city council or the post office use
Here's a completely anecdotal, "a friend of a friend.." story, but I think it's a cool yi and you'll enjoy it:
A friend of a friend is a cartographer who works in DC. According to this person, the official subway map of DC distorts the true geography of the city -- and the subway lines -- as much for security purposes as it does graphic design purposes. The red line, in particular, apparently is drawn with a completely bogus path through the city on the maps. The true path of the line goes underneath the national mall and several important government buildings, if this person is to be believed.
Subway "maps" tend to be more like generalized graph diagrams than cartographically accurate maps. After all, you're stuck in a box and your only choice is which node to get off at.
But it wouldn't surprise me if an overlay on a cartographic map was intentionally inaccurate. One time I was in DC a cab driver was trying to get me to my hotel. His GPS went totally nonfunctional when we were in view of the Pentagon.
It would be an interesting research project to ride around subway systems with a data-logging accelerometer (like a smartphone). Integrate acceleration to get velocity, integrate velocity to get relative position, get GPS fixes when the signal is available, and diagram the results.
Integrate acceleration to get velocity, integrate velocity to get relative position, get GPS fixes when the signal is available, and diagram the results.
Sadly integrating "real data" even once results in wild inaccuracies. A small error in acceleration turns into an offset in velocity which turns into large position drift over time.
Interesting, I had someone report something similar next to the Canadian SIS building in Ottawa. His GPS was telling him the completely wrong route. I don't have a GPS personally to try it.
His GPS went totally nonfunctional when we were in view of the Pentagon.
Which is pretty humorous since, once you're vaguely close to it, it's hard not to find it. If they built several other pentagonal buildings in the area, it would be a different story. :-)
Underground maps usually don't match the real geography. If you made a "real" map, it would be next to useless since the central stations should be all in one place with lots of empty space around. It's the destination / via station you care about when you know the destination, not realistic detail of the path itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_map has some examples of more realistic London underground maps (older editions). It's a common topic of graphic design / visualisation courses.
The red line does turn south a bit going west out of Gallery Place, but it doesn't go any further south than D street and doesn't go under any important federal buildings.
Besides, what would be the point? The National Mall is absolutely riddled with tunnels! West to east there's an old streetcar tunnel at 14th Street under the Bureau of Engraving, the 12th and 9th street road tunnels open to trucks, two tunnels apiece for the yellow/green and orange/blue lines with the latter going under dozens of federal buildings, the entire Smithsonian subway station, large underground art galleries south of the Smithsonian castle, the buried watercourses of Tiber Creek, the National Gallery gift shop & cafeteria under 4th street, the I-395 Center Leg Freeway that has the DOL built on top of it, the United States Capitol subway system, the old C Street streetcar tunnel under Senate Park, and the First Street heavy rail tunnel under the LOC / Supreme Court.
Which official map - the one posted in each station and online? Sure it's distorted: it has to make sense to millions of tourists. Most transit maps I've seen are the same: geographic realism is sacrificed to make it easier for patrons to get around.
Orange and Blue lines go under the Mall: this is reflected on the map. IIRC there is one stop at the Mall, several close. There aren't any Red line stops near the Mall.
several important government buildings
It's D.C. You can't shake a stick without hitting an important government building.
Many people will know about this projection (and first have heard about different projections in general) from The West Wing episode Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody%27s_Going_to_Emergency...).
How maps look like depend on a whole bunch of other factors like the projection they use etc. Thus simply overlaying the maps and say, hey, this is distorted, is simply unfounded. It's very likely that Google maps etc may be adopting different projection systems so the users can have smooth using experience zooming in and out, and panning across the global without feeling the earth is round.
A map projection issue could a) easily be fixed, and b) would have been noticed and fixed already, as it would manifest in more places than just china.
Secondly - I lived in Beijing for half a year in 2010 (ie. 2 years after this post was published). I used Google Maps often on my smartphone, and the GPS fix on the features map was incorrect (ie. I would be standing at a street corner and it would show me a few hundred meters down the street on the map).
It starts with a street view. If you zoom in a little, turns out the bar is out in the water! When you switch to Satellite view, the bar is where it is supposed to be, on the shore.
I don't see the anomaly you're talking about. At any rate, it was probably just that -- an anomaly in the mapping software -- which is completely different from the government-mandated misinformation that is the subject of this story.
I've been in Beijing for the past 3 months, and I've been relying solely on Google Maps to get around. I never had one single problem. If there ever was any discrepancy between maps and the real world, I didn't see it.
I don't doubt there are issues, but in Beijing I haven't seen them.
I did see exactly the same thing in Toronto for some time. The satellite image was misaligned with the street map for the Jane/Finch area. It's fixed now.
I do wonder how much trouble Google goes to fix up maps in China. I can't really see enough of the map to tell if this appears to be deliberate distortion, or just another error.
Hopefully Google is still keeping their maps up-to-date... When I was in Beijing, I found the Google map much easier for finding bus routes that the local alternative.
It could simply be a map projection issue - where the traffic data projection is slightly off by an order of 1000 meters. This datum shift could be easily fixed by Google.
Not true at all. Data can be pulled from multiple database sources, each with their own projection info., so if there are datum shifting issues, you can have some pieces not aligning to basemap while others do.
This is so ridiculous. China really thinks US Army is using Google maps? I wonder how they did not figured out that all armies are not working like theirs...
This really made me pine for the following feature Google will have in five years: "It looks like this was written in English by a non-native speaker. Would you like us to make this more grammatical? (Yes) (No)"
This is not a problem with using a GPS, the problem is the shift from using different mapping technologies.
Trying to get satellite and the map portions to line up is very difficult. Trying to do it on a global scale with data from multiple sources... you get the idea.
Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal evidence and use the word red. And as always bring up other countries that seem scary on fox news.
>Now please get back to China bashing and don't let the facts get in the way of your political/religious feelings. Remember to include lots anecdotal evidence and use the word red. And as always bring up other countries that seem scary on fox news.
I don't know if the author's analysis is accurate, but I'm pretty sure the author is Chinese. I doubt he is repeating what he hears on Fox News.
Trying to get satellite and the map portions to line up is very difficult. Trying to do it on a global scale with data from multiple sources... you get the idea.
Not really. There are loads of different projection systems & coordinate system around the world, so all GIS software is able to deal with converting coordinates and reprojections etc.
Satellite & aerial imagery always has to be georectified and made 'location aware'. Once you've done that, it's trivial to reproject it to whatever system you want.
While I understand your cynicism, my experience in Shanghai and Beijing suggests that Google Maps are some way off between satellite and streetmap modes. I have not found the same problem (or at least to anywhere near the same level) in the UK, Chicago, Michigan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Slovakia and many other countries. There does seem to be an offset applied.
I suspect that Tokyo might well have more. Anyway, the loss of accuracy in such a case wouldn't cause a consistent effect like this - it's normally not in a consistent direction and generally doesn't put you off by so far.
While I agree - in different words - that it's probably just a projection error, it is always extremely off-putting when the Overbearing Defensive Cyber-Army makes its appearance to defend China from any and every possible criticism.
It really does much more harm to China than a simple misunderstanding about projection errors.
- The map data is scrambled (GPS coordinates are encrypted). - To correlate a GPS position with the map data, you plug the HW position through an encryption library (which you have to compile in a specific government building in Beijing). - Border drawing is strongly regulated: no border line between Mainland China and Taiwan, Tibet is of course China, South East Asia Islands can't have border lines drawn and Kashmir is a big thing also with border lines. - You can't show pure GPS coordinates - You can't include a number or POIs in your map (mostly government buildings/facilities).
As a note, India as a certain degree of insanity as well: You can't export a map. Launching a PND there involved shipping a bunch of map technicians there to actually make sure we never got a map outside of India...
Cheers, R