The fact that you *aren't* operating in china is what makes it legal. Their national laws cannot be enforced outside their borders so there is no legal reason not to map China.

China's anti mapping laws don't apply to you. Most aerial/satellite imagery and Openstreetmaps is not scrambled, you could use that.

You made an entire video complaining you can't build China, when you literally can lol. There are indeed accurate mapping information of China and China's laws don't affect people outside of China.

If you do manage it, it’d be funny if you mark all of the scrambled data, so in the middle of that river, there is a sign that says “vehicle charging station”

Legally, China shouldn’t be able to stop people outside of their borders from making a map of their country, because national laws are only meant to apply inside of the borders of a country. They can intentionally scramble their map data THEY submit because they are submitting it through their country, accurate or not.

Why not build it exactly as it is on Google maps? With pharmacies in forests and underwater streets etc. Could be a kinda interesting way to circumnavigate the dumbass laws

You can see where the roads match up with the road outline nearby, it’s just slightly offset. Just line it up manually and move the stores n stuff with it

4:18 Intelegince experts don't need names to identify buildings. Every building has certain subtle differences that can tell you their use, personal population, and pretty much anything youd want to know. Unless it's underground, you'll be able to determine whether or not a building is strategically viable from just looking at satellite images. Which makes china's reasoning even MORE WEIRD because they KNOW THIS

Considering the amount of work you guys do this really isn't the biggest hurdle. - Anyone travelling to China knows google maps is useless there but there's alternatives (Baidu, Gaode) that one google search will easily reveal to you. - To build residential buildings from Chinese cities is probably the easiest out of any country in the WORLD (usually entire areas are copy paste of one building type) - There's plenty of images from landmarks to recreate those. - There's also many Chinese people with VPN that could help. Can you do it with 100% accuracy? No, but that's not happening anywhere else either. Also, you're a Minecraft KZfaqr in the US with no political influence, they have bigger fish to fry. There's plenty of heavy anti CCP content on KZfaq without consequence.

The Chinese Minecraft scene is insane! I have a few good connections -- I'll reach out to them. #BuildTheEarthChina

My first instinct is to use satellite imagery and tell them to come to America and talk to you in person if they don’t like it 🤣 second thought is to build it exactly as they show it on their maps, third idea is to cut out an outline of China to leave a hole in the map leading into the void.

Players on Build the Earth server: What is this massive wasteland? Pippen and his team: It's... It's China

Step 1: go to China Step 2: Copy the whole map, ask some hackers to reverse-engineer it Step 3: disappear mysteriously

I think Minecraft was developed with another studio in China, and that studio has the right to content in the country. This might be why it has more features than Java edition.

This makes me want to make this happen so much... Start building it based on the maps, including putting charging stations in the river. Eventually someone on a VPN will contact you to correct the record.

Reminds me of Camp Humphrey's (US base) in South Korea, on Naver (Google Maps/Waze but Korean) it's just a bunch of farming fields with nothing there, no places, or roads, and the only way you can see a map of the base is using Google Maps 😂

Imagine when this project is over, how many kids will leak their own home address by saying "omg this is where I live"

Why don't you just call it "West Taiwan"? That way you're not technically building China.

6:30 this is the point where he tries to avoid assassination

I like how at the end. One dude places down one block of a current IRL chinese building in the exact coordinates And goes: Whatch you gon do about it?

I'd say just use whatever you can see from satellites. As for buildings, just assume what they look like based on a satellite view. I mean you already built North Korea, building China would likely just be that on a larger scale.

Most of the streets in China on google-maps are just off-set 'down, and right' a little, You could relatively easily take the mapping layer, and shift it over up and to the left to bring it back in position, the google maps API is available and I would assume someone with the knowledge to use said API could reposition them correctly, relatively easily!

You could use the bordering countries to map out the coordinates

5:36 did my man really just say “build the earth in China” lmfao

*Minecraft:* A creative game of limitless possibilities, you can do anything, be anyone, even build the entire world... *China:* Lemme just see about that real quick

If I remember correctly, the way they scramble everything on Google Maps is simply by offsetting the streets slightly from the satellite imagery. Non-satellite version is fine though. Find a way to undo the offset and you're in business.

3:58 It would be a real shame if, at war, their enemies were to completely circumvent this scrambling with one simple trick: not relying on Google Maps

Instead of Google Maps, are their Chinese native map applications accessible on the global internet? I thought the fire wall kept stuff from getting in, not stopped stuff from getting out.

Would be funny to see an "accurate" map of China where there's a charging station in a lake and the bathroom is in the middle of nowhere

The descriptions in Google maps are actually accurate, at least the outlines of roads and such. But they are shifted from where they should be. For example, at 3:18, the outlines are clearly correct, but they are shifted a bit to the east, and a tad to the north.

one google maps when you go into street view into a small village it still loads in pretty well :/ maybe that could help also there is also a lot of reference photos of places in china which could help

with china almost every single popular apartment building has similar designs. If you come across a couple designs you can use the copy paste system to build like 80% of all of chinas city apartments

A single undercover person in china could simply transfer the data of the map, this isn't seriously a genius strategy, this is just making it slightly harder for the regular person, it's more just an inconvenience.

LMAO 7:15 - 7:30 that was so well done, amazing

This shit is still going on I saw this a few years i think I'm impressed you have that kind of determination

Bruv, if you are able to organize a team to build the most isolated country on earth in minecraft, you sure as hell can do the same for China. Heck you can even organize an unscrambling team if you can.

Hi PippenFTS, I know the whole "not trying to influence any person or persons watching this content" was a joke, but I, as a Chinese person using a vpn, appreciate you staying a lot more neutral than others. I'm thoroughly sorry for the state of my country to date, and I wish I could do something about this, but alas I probably would face legal punishments if I acted. Thank you again for not spreading hate and making fun of the absurdity of the CCP in the way you did.

That esculated quickly

I'm sure if you forget any kind of accuracy, and just try to create the shape of the country viewed from top, if the scale is correct, and most well known buildings are accurate, you could prolly make up the other buildings/houses while respecting the building style of certains villages cities etc. that sounds so hard lol

technically you could just get a physical map from like some tourist magazine, or from China there and build it based on whatever is shown on the physical map

Apple maps has an "ok" version of the major cities and roads from china. From the *EXTREMLY* basic looking one done on Apple Maps in city like hong kong and more rural cities and areas, the map seems to line up with the roads quite a decent amount

You can rip satellite images from orbit with a bit of DIY antennae magic. If you’ve got people in China, you could ask them to make these antennae and capture signals from orbiting satellites and use programs to read the data and output images. It’s easier said than done, but possible.

There are easy ways to bypass those laws such as using Chinese map softwares like Baidu Maps, they have complete street view of China. Its also legal to do so since you aren't operating in China.

i mean it's upsetting you guys can't build china, but if this is meant to be a time machine for humans to come then it's kinda cool how china will be remembered as "the nation that couldn't be built"

I am Chinese and live in China Honestly it's mainly kid who plays the Chinese edition most minecraft player just play the official Java instead

Man and I was looking forward to your take on the Uyghur "reservations". Oh well, you could always get Hunter to talk to his buddies over there and see what could be worked out.

Pippen is making the right choice here by playing it safe, I would not trust a bunch of reasonable sounding youtube comments to tell me that Chana can't get pissed off at me for doing something they don't like.

This reminds me about The -Uncensored- Library. But this one is actually really serious because it's include China in it and y'all already know what's gonna happen if you interfere too much with China I don't have to explain it. So abandoning the idea of building China was always the right option

me who lives in china and uses a vpn: my goals are beyond your understanding

Well, the google maps being messed up is probably a technical issue because no street view is available. When you turn on satellite view in China, you will see an *image* roughly combined with satellite image and map data, since google cars are not allowed (obviously) to take street images. So the coordinates offered are correct, it's just the satellite image is not matching up.

My suggestion: Use Baidu maps! It has accurate satellite maps that match with the streets and even street view! This way you can accurately build china.

As someone from China, I just want you guys to know that don't ever play chinesee minecraft, it is dum, it is boring, and it is just not minecraft. The chinese minecraft can't connect to the real minecraft's smp, which is dum. There's no feature that's special about the Chinese minecraft, except for a fox following you around. But, lots of people in China have access to real minecraft.Besides, people in cities like Shanghai or Guangdong would have access to discord, as different parts of China has a really differed users. The larger cities has more people that knows about these stuff, and they get vpns so that they can use it. So discord does work in some part of China. And also, cities like Chongqing does have the features like the "underwater civilization". So building China is possible, but I guess you actually have to google stuff about some of the cities special traits, just because sometimes maps can't show that. And you can also start off with easier cities that were more international, and has more detailed maps like Shanghai.

If anyone in the china team has an iphone, ipad etc, they could use apple maps (which has actually gotten a lot better) and the roads and things are actually correct

I think I've found a way around this, well sort of. By using the grey lines on Google Earth that mark roads. Look for an intersection & then look for an intersection that matches with the grey lines that mark roads. The grey lines & the actually roads seen on satellite, they can be offset in any direction. North, South, East, West, you name it. It will only help with coordinates but since there's a lack of 3D & Street view in China 🇨🇳. The appearances of buildings (Especially the sides out of view) would be difficult to map out.

No one tell him that their "scrambling" is just shifting the street map off of satellite imagery a little bit south-west

Since the roads are all auto-generated, I assume based on the same map data as google maps, all the roads are in the wrong place. You would need to somehow remap the roads based on satellite images if you even hoped to get close to mapping china. Wait. If the roads are in the wrong place, but the altitude and ocean data is correct, wouldn't that mean that the BTE world would actually have roads in the middle of lakes? just a thought.

Have you tried using the wayback machine/ internet archive to go back right before this out rayjus geomaping ban of china and map it that way? It might not be up to date BUT it would be sufficient enough

That intro is awesome and sad at the same time.

That FBI OPEN UP was enough for me to sub

This seems like more of an inconvenience compared to building the Earth 1:1 in Minecraft

So you can make North Korea, but not China?

Never disappoint with intros

You could send a good 20-30 people to different areas of china and have them take videos/pics of the areas around then cone back and build accordingly

This is truly a bruh moment

I would genuinely build underground or water facilities where the pins say they are as an inside joke, and just try to build the actual map on the surface of the world

the end was too fucking good

That black hole is a reservoir by the way. There is a method of preventing water from escaping or animals from landing that involves thousands of these lil black balls. or at least that is my theory on it given the nature around the location and the large space cut out for it.

Rest of the world: Combining all of our maps to make travelling easier for those who aren't from here might give a tactical advantage to our war enemies as they'll know where the streets are, but that's a small price to pay for the well-being of our citizens and our visitors. China: *no*

I can't imagine how amazing it would be to help build this massive undertaking of a project. I would love to join if it would be possible.

The satellite data is different from the roadmaps. If you exclude waypoints and street mapping data and go simply by the images archived in Google Earth, the map is accurate. The only data scrambled and intentionally wrong is the points of interest. If you exclude the street overlays, waypoints, and points of interest, then you can accurately say screw it and map the country.

You can try using Baidu maps! I believe you can see China without it glitching out :)

@4:10 If China actually thinks that making their own maps of China and messing with Google Earth is how they can have a better defense....oy. I don't think militaries plan based on Google Earth. We have satellites and make our own maps as do a couple dozen other countries and I wager that maps are also shared so pretty much every country that matters has accurate maps of China. They do it because they want to keep information from their own people.

some roads seem to just be offset by a bit, maybe if you move it all around, you can get the real map

3:23 I mean, Mao literally at least had plans for an underground city beneath the capital in case of nuclear bombing. There are tunnels but, I'm not sure if it got any further than that or not Also, even with accurate satellite imagery, there's still a lot of work and also the fact of dealing with things the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (controversial for many reasons) or the many ghost towns real estate companies have built over the years to generate money from investord

Actually you can build it as it's actually outside of the laws a loophole technically. You can build it like it is on Google maps and just build stuff everyone knows and other maps and people in China all can.

I mean you can do Hong Kong as it is accurate in Google maps

You can use Google Earth because there are a lot of 360 pictures of China and the buildings across the country it even shows you the coordinates

There’s nothing that gets me hyped more than someone using Halo 2 content

Alternatively, just recreate the shape of China's landmass as a cut out of the world (meaning dig to bed rock and dig out the shape of the country). Toss a few of the iconic buildings into the bed rock area. Then call the area something like "The censored void" or something.

I’m quite confused right now because I saw the official BTE channel literally uploaded a video 2 months ago regarding the formation of an official Chinese team that would build China in Minecraft, lead by a user named PikaNiko who has influence with the BTE Admins. They even “dove deep into Chinese mapping laws to be entirely sure this is legal” (from the video). So is it happening or not 🤷‍♂️

-9000 social credit

In France, it would be because of nonsense copyright laws, LOL. In Belgium, the same kind of deal several years ago, too!

You should build the pyramids there if you ever do this.

what if we build only the public infrastructure, and private companies or other places of association and let the people build their dream houses. This would protect the privacy and security of each player, since they tend to go to their houses and share it to strangers.

If I'm not mistaken, Tencent owns/runs Minecraft中国版 (not entirely sure the agreement with Mojang), soo~ maybe possible if they put together a team (there's just the asking part). Honestly I think it would be a project China would get behind: of course it wouldn't be super accurate, but centered primarily on showing the beauty and prestige of Chinese cities and cultural sites through Minecraft. It is also likely that less important (to the project) structures and infrastructure would be intentionally made inaccurate for national security purposes. These areas could be used to showcase the local architecture and lifestyle. Of course, the government would also be able to filter whatever parts of the project is shown abroad, but it'd be nice to share the fun with the Chinese people.

The Soviet Union sent spies to map the entire planet, the Americans used those maps to invade Afghanistan because they were so accurate, you’d have to edit them quite a bit but it’s better than the public maps

Imagine you are lost somewhere and you open google maps to go to a hotel, and end up at a river.

There are several ways that this could be circumnavigated from within the country, though my personal solution (that's probably very indicative of my neurodivergency considering that this was my first thought) would be to attempt a recreation based on google maps, then to isolate the display roads and landmarks from the background image and train a neural network to be able to map that image to the base one by distorting it. Kinda like by generating a 2D vector field on an arbitrary function, with the function being the thing getting generated by the AI. Following that, remap the roads via the AI, and gather a team to work on translating any erroneous points that are clearly off to their most likely position on the newly generated map. Or, better, get a team in China to find each point that's off (a far smaller number after the AI did the remap) and collaberate with an external team to plot them. Once that's done, use the new map instead of Google

Dang the most sus country doesn't allow you to build it? Surprise to me

Should build the map as it is in google anyway, it would be funny seeing roads go under water

When I lived in China, I had to use Chinese Map Apps because China sees its geography as a national secret.

I got a suggestion: use the chinese map that is downloadable by appstore in apple, this can be more accurate as you can merge both data in google and the chinese one together

I have a question. Could I build my hometown and add it to the Build the Earth maps? My town isn't big and isn't well known

there is a game in roblox, which is called Tang County. a roleplay game. the problem is, tang county is actually a real life place in china

You better go all out and make all satellites orbiting the earth as of now

On mapquest the streets are still matching to the satellite images

apples map app looks pretty accurate with china I think you can do it from there

If you could build the earth China, it would be one of the funnest projects. They literally have a house in the middle of a highway cause the guy refused to move out.

Aww I really wanted to see my hometown being built in mc

I’m still waiting for the video of your “Vanilla trees growing more then once” that you promised 2 years ago (building Seattle 1 to 1 in Minecraft Episode 1, top comment)