Bibliographic Review: National Atlas of China

Summary

This review evaluates the National Atlas of China, edited by Dr. Chang Chi-yun and published in five volumes in Taipei (1960-1963). The atlas employs the Lambert conformal projection, with scales varying by region: 1:200,000 to 1:100,000 for Taiwan and 1:2,000,000 for China proper. Contents include political divisions, topography, industry, and climate, supplemented by maps of major cities. Administrative divisions follow the 1947 promulgation, and place names include Wade-Giles romanization indices. Although cartographic techniques do not surpass the 1934 New Atlas of the Republic of China by Ding Wenjiang et al., the inclusion of soil, forest, and vegetation distribution maps, enriched frontier data, and large-scale Taiwan maps facilitating overviews of physical, human, and economic conditions demonstrate post-WWII advances in Chinese geographical research.