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.
Comments
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.
This lady is very informative. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/yang_lan.html
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.
Are you suggesting that in this case the blogger is similarly misinformed or deluded?
No.