The investigation was reported by the news Web site of Yunnan on Feb. 28, and a reporter at China Radio International asked an official with a national mapping agency about that case and others involving illegal mapping on Tuesday at the annual legislative session in Beijing.
The official, Li Pengde, did not mention Coca-Cola in his reply, but said: “Some people seek personal benefits through collecting that information. We can’t rule out that some gave that information to foreign intelligence agencies.”
The report on the Yunnan Web site said the Coca-Cola case was one of 21 in which a provincial agency was investigating a person or group for “illegal use of handheld GPS equipment to collect classified information.”
The Coca-Cola spokeswoman said in an e-mail Wednesday that to make truck deliveries more efficient, some local bottling plants had adopted electronic mapping and “location-based customer logistics systems that are commercially available in China through authorized local suppliers.”
