In September of 2014, Jonathan Browning came across something quite stunning. As a freelance photographer living in China, he was searching for locations on Shanghai's Huangpu River using Baidu Total View (the Chinese version of Google Street View). While examining one picture closely, he noticed that part of a cooling chimney next to a suspension bridge had been crudely erased.
As Browning investigated further, more instances were found, so as Wired reports, Browning hired an SUV and asked a friend to drive him around as he took photographs so he could see the buildings for himself. "You don't want to be seen. Two foreigners driving a car is always weird, especially in an industrial area, and then taking photos, it can cause problems" Browning said, adding that he had encountered problems in the past working on stories about pollution.
Browning's isn't sure why this strange scrubbing of photos takes place; "At first I thought it could just be for weird aesthetic reasons. I guess it's security. But it's a bit random." He wondered about the process behind 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 up with Photoshop", "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?"
Johan Lagerkvist, a professor of Chinese language and culture at Stockholm University said "It's a bit peculiar. It's like shouting, 'hey, we've got something secret over here!'", although he didn't think it was the government "It doesn't look like the government, although that cannot be ruled out."
Here is what Browning found as he took pictures of his own and compared them to Baidu.
Browning has since moved back to the UK with his wife, and said that China's government is always a mystery: "China's a great country. 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."
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Whether it's a government mandated scrubbing of industrial parks, or just a bored employee at Baidu who felt like messing with some pictures we'll never really know. What Browning found however, is certainly fascinating.
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