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China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

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Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#31

Post by marshray »

jordanb wrote: post #30
marshray wrote: post #23

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…

Isn't it odd that a bigger landmass confers more importance to her? I guess by her reckoning Russia is the most important country in the world, followed by Canada?

No, I don't think that's what she was saying at all.

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#32

Post by reddytowns »

marshray wrote: post #23

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…

I asked my Taiwanese friend about this and she said when she was a kid, Taiwanese maps would have a larger Taiwan compared to China. She said it was to make Taiwan seem more important.

So there is at least some truth to what she said

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#33

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nflknfk wrote: post #28
marshray wrote: post #23

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…

Similar experience(s): I went to the University of Washington, at which an extremely high percentage of the students were Chinese (I want to say between 30% and 40%). Taiwan and the South China Sea are definite hotbutton issues. Once during an international relations lecture of about 200 people, the professor made the mistake of mentioning Taiwan which caused one of the Chinese students to stand up and begin talking…

UW has never had that high percentage of Chinese students; from the demographics report:

http://www.washington.edu/omad/files/2015/02/2015-01-09-UW-S...

So they (Asians, other) are at 21.5% in 2014/15. Note that international has its own separate slice, at 14.7%, that isn't broken down. So...that means all that 21.5% are American, possibly of Chinese descent, which is far away from Chinese nationals.

UW is a commuter school, I think 75% of the students live at home even. So if you were living on campus, your view of the demographics would be a bit skewed. Incidentally, in 2013, UW admitted a class of 6,255, 687 of which were Chinese, roughly 10%, which still isn't shabby:

http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/10/14/uw-fall-2013-enrol...

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#34

Post by zurn »

jordanb wrote: post #30
marshray wrote: post #23

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…

Isn't it odd that a bigger landmass confers more importance to her? I guess by her reckoning Russia is the most important country in the world, followed by Canada?

They would be.. except Russia and Canada are shrunken on most world or US/Europe maps because of the distortion from the map projection. Yet another mapmakers conspiracy.

(everything else that's far from the map center is of course also affected this way)

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#35

Post by kbart »

zurn wrote: post #34
jordanb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it odd that a bigger landmass confers more importance to her? I guess by her reckoning Russia is the most important country in the world, followed by Canada?

They would be.. except Russia and Canada are shrunken on most world or US/Europe maps because of the distortion from the map projection. Yet another mapmakers conspiracy. (everything else that's far from the map center is of course also affected this way)

Map making is hard. You can't transfer spherical world to a flat paper sheet/screen without distorting it in one way or another. There was an article not long ago here in HN about this problem:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/google-maps-get...

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#36

Post by nflknfk »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #33
nflknfk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar experience(s): I went to the University of Washington, at which an extremely high percentage of the students were Chinese (I want to say between 30% and 40%). Taiwan and the South China Sea are definite hotbutton issues. Once during an international relations lecture of about 200 people, the professor made the mistake of mentioning Taiwan which caused one of the Chinese students to stand up and begin talking…

UW has never had that high percentage of Chinese students; from the demographics report: http://www.washington.edu/omad/files/2015/02/2015-01-09-UW-S... So they (Asians, other) are at 21.5% in 2014/15. Note that international has its own separate slice, at 14.7%, that isn't broken down. So...that means all that 21.5% are American, possibly of Chinese descent, which is far away from Chinese nationals. UW is a commuter…

What many of them do, including my former roommate, is to move over here during their sophomore or junior years of high school so they can achieve resident status in the state of Washington and get cheap college tuition. So going by those numbers you found, the true percentage is probably between 25% and 30%.

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#37

Post by poizan42 »

csours wrote: post #21
jpatokal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The offsets are not random, but algorithmic, using the GCJ-02 datum. Of course, legal access to use the GCJ-02 algorithms requires that you kowtow to the Chinese government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

> It uses an encryption algorithm[13] which adds apparently random offsets to both the latitude and longitude, with the alleged goal of improving national security. You're both right! It uses reversible randomness apparently. Wonder how hard the algorithm and seed(s) are to figure out

> reversible randomness

Yeah, we have a word for that: encryption

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#38

Post by empressplay »

wnevets wrote: post #27
marshray wrote: post #23

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…

It's not unprecedented for entire continents not having the correct size on a map. http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartograph... http://thetruesize.com/

That "true size" website is wildly inaccurate. I'm puzzled what the motivation is for that.

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#39

Post by qq66 »

zurn wrote: post #34
jordanb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it odd that a bigger landmass confers more importance to her? I guess by her reckoning Russia is the most important country in the world, followed by Canada?

They would be.. except Russia and Canada are shrunken on most world or US/Europe maps because of the distortion from the map projection. Yet another mapmakers conspiracy. (everything else that's far from the map center is of course also affected this way)

Doesn't the commonly used Mercator projection make polar regions seem larger than normal? Causing Greenland to seem enormous?

Re: China Cracks Down on Politically Incorrect Maps

#40

Post by zurn »

qq66 wrote: post #39
zurn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would be.. except Russia and Canada are shrunken on most world or US/Europe maps because of the distortion from the map projection. Yet another mapmakers conspiracy. (everything else that's far from the map center is of course also affected this way)

Doesn't the commonly used Mercator projection make polar regions seem larger than normal? Causing Greenland to seem enormous?

Shh!
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