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.


Above: a chimney stack in a Chinese industrial district. Below: the same area in Baidu Total View. The stacks have been removed from the Baidu image, but not the smoke, which billows out regardless. "It's not very well done," said Browning. "The sign has been Photoshopped so you can't name the power station. But, on Map View, it still says which power station it is." This area was busy, so Browning took his photograph from the car. "I got a couple of weird looks, so I did that quickly and then left" Jonathan Browning / Baidu

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.

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"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.

Above: a cooling tower east of Shanghai. Below: the same cooling tower in Baidu Total View. This cooling tower, with workers relaxing in the foreground, was the first censored image Browning uncovered. "Even 500 to 1,000 metres away on Total View, some parts of it are cloned out. But then if you turn the corner, it's in full view." On the day he took his photographs, this was his penultimate stop. "It's in kind of a no-man's land, so there's not really much going on in that area" Jonathan Browning / Baidu

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."


More mysterious disappearances in Baidu Total View

Above: a fire station in central Shanghai. Below: the same fire station in Baidu Total View. Browning found this fire station in central Shanghai, not far from the popular shopping district

of Xintiandi. "That's just next to where I lived," he says. Of all the censored images, it seems the most inexplicable: what reason could there be for concealing the location of a fire station? "Why would they do that?" Browning wonders. "Who's given the directive to make sure these are deleted?" Jonathan Browning / Baidu

Above: a restaurant north of Shanghai. Below: the same restaurant in Baidu Total View. The sign outside this building in Baidu's picture reads "restaurant" - bizarrely, the roof of the entranceway has been used as the material for cloning. "I guess with all those plastic bottles there it's an informal recycling depot," says Browning. "Scrap metal, plastics, making a little bit of business." After nine years in China, he still finds the wealth gap bewildering. "You've got these insanely wealthy people, and then you've got places like this" Jonathan Browning / Baidu