Japanese GPS hulabaloo

Gollevainen said:

well as a sort of semi ground-surveyr myself and knowing many "hard core" surveyers, I can assure, such law philosophy is akward and obscure. Sea surveying, expecially in EEC is completely another question and cannot in any sense claimed to be standard and harmless procedure. Just action would always have an "evil" purpose behind. But that doesent apply to basic land surveying, becouse all infrastructure, all construction, all areal politics, all real estate questions and many more cruicial fields of society depends on surveying that it is as common task as would be hitting a nail with hammer.
To think that it would require authorisation wouldnt even have crossed my mind untill this news.

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Surveying your own land is one thing. Surveying other people's land at least requires the owner's approval, or it's trespassing. Surveying land for public use (road, park) is one thing -- although it would be wise to at least gain the approval of the local government. But to survey unopened, government owned land in the middle of nowhere (i.e. no legitimate reason for use), that's really asking for it.

Note this information, with reduced precision, is probably available from national cartographical agency. There is really no need to go acquire it yourself. If you require that much precision in the middle of nowhere, then your motive is suspicious.

Since this is paid by Japanese government, intelligence operation cannot be ruled out.

Surveying your own land is one thing. Surveying other people's land at least requires the owner's approval

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Nope. Land surveyrs are next from the god.
In the old days, where the traditions of the surveyers professional pride comes from, the Surveyers where the ones that gave the land to the ones that then can claim themselves as owners. In west, where Japanese surveying cultures also comes from, the peasants and other rural inhabitants still keeps Surveyers in high esteem and are always really polite and gestural towards surveyers. Its rather obscure situation in here to think that someone would come to say to a surveyer that he cannot survey...it would be a braking of Tabu...so Again, its propaply only a matter of mistake why japanese werent thinking that such laws could exist.

Note this information, with reduced precision, is probably available from national cartographical agency. There is really no need to go acquire it yourself. If you require that much precision in the middle of nowhere, then your motive is suspicious.

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well I can say thing or two about precission, expecially when confroting Japanese....But I wont
But then again we still need to know exactly of what they were doing in there and with what sort of equipment. In modern day, a precission levels that Chinese government would propaply have given are worth of squat, unless they were searching a road to their grandma's cabin.

Gollevainen said:

In west, where Japanese surveying cultures also comes from, the peasants and other rural inhabitants still keeps Surveyers in high esteem and are always really polite and gestural towards surveyers. Its rather obscure situation in here to think that someone would come to say to a surveyer that he cannot survey...it would be a braking of Tabu...so Again, its propaply only a matter of mistake why japanese werent thinking that such laws could exist.

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Its more likely deference was due to traditional deference to government. The same cannot be applied to foreigner-- which is a gross invasion of national sovereignty.

Gollevainen said:

But then again we still need to know exactly of what they were doing in there and with what sort of equipment. In modern day, a precision levels that Chinese government would propaply have given are worth of squat, unless they were searching a road to their grandma's cabin.

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If Chinese government had refused to provide higher precision maps, isn't that the end of the issue?

Well, there is not much point to argue over this. I didn't open this thread and have no intention to argue about it.

It's just part of special operation and anti-operation of it, going 24/7 all the time.

Well, my take of this is either this is an act of extreme stupidity by a Japanese government agency, or it's a intelligence operation that got caught -- depending on your perception of Japanese government competence.

Given Japanese government's reputation of meticulousness and the right wing nature of the administration, I rather think it's the latter.

nemo said:

BEIJING — China has fined and confiscated surveying equipment from four Japanese citizens who were carrying out an unauthorized survey in Xinjiang autonomous region of northwestern China, a Chinese report said Thursday.

The four, commissioned by the Japanese government-affiliated Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, had carried out the survey on March 5, entering the region with two GPS devices as well as maps, said the report on the China National Radio website.

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Whoa..... at first I thought they were simply harmless individuals. But this puts a totally different spin on it. There is no way a government agency would be unaware that they can't just go into China and start surveying. China has had problems with Japanese people doing that in the past.

These individuals themselves probably don't know much. They were probably just given orders from above. But China needs to take this straight to the Japanese government and demand a public apology.

At the end of this March, two Japanese were captured in Jiangxi province doing the samething.

The GPS receivers they carried, like in Xinjiang, are the military class ones. They can receive the military code and far precise than the regular civilian GPS. Just wonder where they got them for a "civilian purpose survey"?

It's good for Chinese to crack GPS military code with these captured devices, probably they cracked it already.

Re: New Speacial forces pictures

Gollevainen said:

Extracted into own thread....the discussion is too tasty....





wll if you say that the law is just recent, It proves my point exactly. the japanese where propaply just unware of just strange law that doesent run hand by hand with the comon law-sense, that most westeners are use to. Im not saying that China doesent have rigth to do so, Im only here to deter that BS that it would have had any inteligence or military relation of the Japanese act.






BUT to those who want to make fools of themselfs by posing an anti-japanese rant that those must have been spyes, becouse a) they are japanese and they all are born as evil china haters, or b) becouse it took place in china that is paradise like wonderland that is always under threat of evil japanese manticores....get a brake!
Or properly, next time, take an actual look to the facts of the matter before discussing it, and if its so obvious that you dont have any sort of clue of what so ever about basic surveying, dont even bother......

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The law was passed >10 years ago. The new law was just to repeat the part about foreigners already existed in the first law.

Re: New Speacial forces pictures

FuManChu said:

You didn't answer Golle's point about unnecessary paranoia, when anyone with half a brain knows Japan has no missiles that could attack China in such a way.

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They were punished according to existing law and was treated as doing sth without license instead of spying. From where you see the paranoia?

Had a look at that institute, it does a lot of inter-university research projects, mostly in the environmental studies. Such research studies:

Some of their activities in China:
- FUKUSHIMA, Yoshihiro
- HAYASAKA, Tadahiro
- SATO, Yo-Ichiro
- ZHENG, Yuejun

etc
It looks more like a bunch of scientists doing research... a much a-do about nothing.