In September 2014, Jonathan Browning came across a Chinese mystery. Browning, a freelance photographer, was searching for locations on Shanghai's Huangpu River using Baidu Total View - the Chinese version of Google Street View. The Huangpu is Shanghai's main river, and large sections of its banks are lined with soot-stained factories and squat industrial compounds.
As Browning looked, he saw that one of these structures - a cooling chimney next to a suspension bridge - had been crudely erased. "I thought, that's strange, why would they do that?" Browning, 32, who has lived in Shanghai since 2007 told WIRED. "Then I saw another one." As Browning investigated further, he found other places that had been removed: government buildings, prisons, even a fire station. "At first I thought it could just be for weird aesthetic reasons," he said. "I guess it's security. But it's a bit random."
In China, Baidu Maps is the default tool for navigation. Since it launched in 2013, Baidu Total View has covered 372 Chinese cities. As of December 2015, it claimed 302 million monthly active users - up 43 per cent year-on-year.
Baidu Total View was created in the same way as Google Street View: by cars with cameras or - for inaccessible areas - by backpack-toting individuals. Like Google, Baidu removes personal details such as car registration plates. "We respect user privacy and won't publish any content that infringes on individual privacy and interest, or public security," said Kaiser Kuo, Baidu's director of international communications. Kuo declines to answer questions about the missing buildings. But the editing seems to go beyond what is necessary to protect privacy or national security.
"It's a bit peculiar," added Johan Lagerkvist, professor of Chinese language and culture at Stockholm University. "It's like shouting, 'Hey, we've got something secret over here!'"
Rather than national security, the deletions could be an arrangement intended to protect industrial or commercial secrets, says Lagerkvist. "It doesn't have to be the government - although that cannot be ruled out."
To see the blanked-out buildings for himself, Browning hired an SUV and asked a friend to drive him around as he took photographs. "You don't want to be seen," he says. "Two foreigners driving a car is always weird, especially in an industrial area, and then taking photos… It can cause problems." He'd had confrontations in the past, working on stories about pollution.
Browning wonders about the process behind the censorship: "I don't know who does it, if it's an algorithm that gets GPS co-ordinates for each place and then somehow wipes it, or if an actual person goes to each one and cleans it with Photoshop." The lack of consistency makes him suspect a human is responsible. "It would be great to meet these people and see what they think about it. If they wanted to do it, why didn't they do it properly?"
The project was one of Browning's last in China: after nine years, he moved back to the UK in May with his Chinese wife. "China's a great country," he says. "But it's two different things. You've got the government and what they say and do, and then you've got the people. The government is always the mystery."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
