Book review: A new map of the Republic of China

This review evaluates The New Map of the Republic of China, planned by Ding Wenjiang, assisted by Weng Wenhao, and edited and supervised by Zeng Shiying. Its purpose is both to establish the atlas’s cartographic and scholarly significance and to identify problems requiring correction or supplementation. Drawing on the history of Chinese cartography, projection theory, geodetic positioning, terrain representation, climatology, and human geography, the reviewer conducts a systematic examination of the atlas’s methods and contents. The atlas synthesizes more than two centuries of Chinese and foreign surveys. It employs the Albers equal-area conic projection for general maps and polyconic projections for detailed sheets, critically consolidates reliable latitude and longitude records for over one thousand locations, and depicts national relief through contour and bathymetric lines with layered coloring. It also contains physical, administrative, urban, climatic, agricultural, mineral, and transportation maps, together with a gazetteer of approximately 37,000 place names. These features make it an unprecedented achievement in Chinese-produced cartography and an important research instrument for its time. The review nevertheless identifies substantial limitations. Its account of the origins of modern Chinese mapping underestimates Matteo Ricci’s earlier introduction of geometric projections and astronomical position measurement. Ordinary polyconic projection is unsuitable for highly precise area calculations, while several provincial boundaries and reported area figures imply a degree of certainty unsupported by available surveys. The atlas also risks equating low elevation with plains, agricultural suitability, or fertile soils and associating topographic divisions too directly with economic regions, thereby reproducing environmental determinism. Its climatic maps suffer from crowded graphics, insufficient documentation of sources, excessive interpolation in sparsely observed regions, reliance on temperatures theoretically reduced to sea level, and inadequate attention to seasonal rainfall, frost-free periods, and growing seasons. Additional weaknesses include inconsistent scales, missing legends, outdated human and transportation information, imprecise terminology, limited bathymetric detail, and failure to show the continental shelf or the varying reliability of regional surveys. The reviewer recommends clearer source criticism, explicit indications of data quality, improved thematic classification, and periodically issued corrections. Finally, by comparing the French and Russian texts of the Treaty of Aigun with the history of taxation and administration, the article argues that the Sixty-Four Villages East of the Amur should not be represented as Russian territory. Overall, the review recognizes the atlas as foundational to the modernization and public dissemination of Chinese cartography while insisting that scientific mapping must respect data precision, theoretical limits, temporal change, and legal-historical evidence.