Amap in a car Photo: VCG

As Taiwan users discussed Chinese mainland navigation app Amap's new traffic light countdown feature in Taiwan, the island's regional digital affairs authority said it is monitoring potential security risks and may consider whether to ban the app. Mainland experts said that what the DPP authorities are truly worried and uneasy about is not any single app, but the growing cross-Straits exchanges and the tangible benefits such services bring to Taiwan residents. 

According to a report by Taiwan regional media outlet "China Times," a new feature launched by the mainland navigation app Amap in April that displays traffic light countdowns in Taiwan has sparked discussions on the island, with some lawmakers hyping so-called "national security concerns."

Taiwan's digital affairs chief Lin Yi-jing claimed Wednesday that the data used by Amap was not collected directly in Taiwan, but obtained from a Dutch supplier, while the countdown function was not connected to the island's "official" systems and instead relied on user-based big data analysis. He claimed authorities would continue assessing potential security risks before deciding whether to ban the app, according to the report. 

The report's headline questioned whether Amap might become "another Xiaohongshu," as the island's digital affairs authority said it did not rule out a ban.

In December 2025, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities imposed a one-year ban on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, a mainland app with more than 3 million users in Taiwan, citing so-called cybersecurity concerns, drawing criticism on the island.

In response to an inquiry from the Global Times on Wednesday, Amap said that its traffic-light countdown feature was launched in Taiwan Province, China, on April 13. In July 2025, the company also introduced lane-level navigation in Taiwan Province. Users are welcome to try these features.

Amap can use AI to simulate and reconstruct traffic light cycles with high accuracy. Given Taiwan's relatively small urban scale and limited number of traffic lights, full coverage is technically achievable, Xiang Ligang, a veteran industry analyst and director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

While other navigation apps have long operated in Taiwan, they appear to have moved more slowly in developing refined, high-value features such as traffic light countdowns. Mainland map apps now hold a clear edge in both technological application and iteration speed, and Amap's distinctive features quickly drew attention, said Xiang. 

A growing number of foreign netizens are also praising Chinese navigation and positioning apps such as Amap, Baidu Maps and Tencent Maps for a set of features and integrations. The shade-routing function is only one of several capabilities that foreign users describe as borderline "clever." Other widely praised functions include lane-change notifications on highways, live countdown timers for traffic lights, and real-time bus tracking that shows a vehicle's exact location and an accurate estimated time of arrival.

The "China Times" report on Wednesday also noted the discussions sparked by Amap, saying that many netizens who frequently travel between the mainland and the Taiwan region recently shared that the app now displays traffic light countdowns in Taiwan, allowing users to track in real time how many seconds remain before a red light changes. They said the countdown shown on Amap's navigation screen was almost perfectly synchronized with the actual traffic lights, with virtually no margin of error.

Some netizens also shared their experiences using the app on social media. For example, a netizen "yuechang13" wrote on Threads that "The traffic lights shown on the map match the actual traffic lights on the road in Taiwan with literally zero discrepancy. It's basically black technology! Hope it can support traditional Chinese as well." Another netizen "alanclu598" wrote that "Although not every traffic light is covered, the speed of this update really outclasses all navigation systems in Taiwan."

A Facebook account "GeoLab" analyzed the technology behind Amap's countdown feature, saying Amap did not directly acquire Taiwan's traffic light data, but instead inferred signal cycles through large volumes of vehicle trajectory data. The method is a type of big-data algorithm that becomes increasingly accurate as usage grows.

On the local forum PTT, some users complained about local navigation apps, while others pointed to the regional authorities' "security" concerns.

On April 14, Taiwan regional media outlet M News reported on discussions surrounding Amap's countdown function, claiming the app appeared to have an exceptionally detailed grasp of Taiwan's traffic conditions, with some users even describing its interface as more polished than Google Maps. The report claimed that such precise knowledge of local traffic had "fueled concerns" among some on the island that.

Xiang said that what concerns the Taiwan authorities is not public welfare, but political calculation. If they view the mainland as an opponent, they will portray it as a threat; if they return to the perspective of common development, it is simply a technology that benefits the broader public in Taiwan.

"In essence, what the DPP authorities cannot tolerate is not a single app, but cross-Straits exchange itself. Apps such as Amap and Xiaohongshu have made daily life more convenient for Taiwan residents and given them a clearer sense of the mainland's technological progress, which is exactly why the authorities feel uneasy," Yu Qiang, head of the cross-Straits development research center of the Beijing Technology and Business University, told the Global Times. 

"Cross-Straits economies are highly complementary. Rejecting deeper cooperation for political reasons means passing up opportunities for development and, in the end, hurting the people on the island," said Yu.