Which WMS would work within China?

Question

Is there a WMS service of satellite imagery that works within China?

I know that Google satellite imagery is blocked. What about Bing? ESRI? Is there a local service?

I'm not interested in using a remote VPN, I would like a solid solution.

Answer 1

Among the basemaps provided by the QuickMapServices plugin is a set of basemaps called "TianDiTu." According to the Wikipedia article for Tianditu, this is "China’s first official free web mapping service," created and provided by the government. That seems as solid a local solution as you could possibly get without a VPN.

The QuickMapServices plugin provides 6 versions of TianDiTu basemaps: TianDiTu BaseMap, TianDiTu BaseMap Label, TianDiTu Satellite, TianDiTu Satellite Label, TianDiTu Terrain, and TianDiTu Terrain Label

You can find the getMapURLs for these maps as XYZ tiles in the layer properties after loading the layer through the plugin, eg TianDiTu BaseMap getMapURL:

http://t0.tianditu.cn/DataServer?T=vec_w&X={x}&Y={y}&L={z}

The layers from the QMS plugin are provided as XYZ tiles. Presumably TianDiTu basemaps are also available as WMS layers, but I don't have the WMS links. (I'm basing this assumption on the words "web mapping service" in the Wikipedia article).

Apparently these base maps present the official Chinese government position on territorial possession, eg Taiwan is labelled as a province of China. This topic is discussed in more detail in the Wikipedia article, which I do recommend reading.

Official website of TianDiTu: http://www.tianditu.gov.cn/

English-language website (currently: http://en.tianditu.com/