Does Google Maps work in China?

People assume the block is the whole story, so they buy an eSIM, open Google Maps and find that it still sends them the wrong way. There are two separate problems:

• The block. On a Chinese SIM or hotel Wi-Fi, Google Maps can’t reach Google, so it shows a blank or out-of-date map and can’t search.
• The data. Even on a roaming connection, Google’s picture of China is thin. Shops close, roads change and whole metro lines open, and Google is often years behind.

A roaming eSIM fixes the first. Nothing you can buy fixes the second, which is why people who live in China don’t use Google Maps there.

This one puzzles people. In mainland China, street maps are required to use a shifted coordinate system called GCJ-02. Your phone’s GPS reports true coordinates, and Google’s street layer doesn’t always line up with them. The gap has been reported at up to 500 metres, and it’s why your dot can appear inside a river or a block away from where you stand.

Google’s satellite view uses true positions, so it can look right while the street names beside it don’t. Chinese map apps handle the shift properly, and their dot sits on the road you’re actually on.

Expect routing to be the weakest part. Driving, walking and transit directions in China are patchy in Google Maps and can be missing altogether, and the metro lines it does know can be out of date. Train and bus times aren’t something to rely on either.

Offline maps don’t rescue this. Reports differ on whether Chinese areas can be downloaded at all, and an offline copy still has the old data and the same offset. Saving places you want to visit is still useful, but copy their Chinese names and addresses somewhere too, because a taxi driver can’t read your Google Maps pin.

It isn’t useless on a roaming connection. It’s handy for looking at places you saved at home, reading English reviews, and getting a sense of a neighbourhood before you go. For the actual walk, switch apps. A common way to do it is to find a place in Google Maps, copy its Chinese name, then paste it into Amap.

In Hong Kong and Macau none of this applies: Google Maps works normally, and it’s the usual choice there.

Our map guide compares them properly. In short, Amap (also called Gaode) has the most complete data for walking, the metro and buses, and has an English mode, though some names stay in Chinese. On an iPhone, Apple Maps uses the same underlying data in the mainland, reads well in English, and needs nothing extra to install, but its transit coverage thins out beyond big cities.