Gregory Veeck · 1995
This review evaluates The National Economic Atlas of China (1994), a landmark reference work created through collaboration among major Chinese planning, geography, statistics, and information agencies. Originating in the national atlas project proposed in 1958, the volume represents the most comprehensive English-language cartographic account of China’s economy then available. It contains 265 full-color maps, supported by four handbooks, and organizes its material into ten sections covering resources, population, the general economy, agriculture, industry, transportation and communications, construction and environmental protection, commerce and finance, social services, and provincial economies. More than 500 variables are mapped for nearly 2,833 county-level units, providing unusually detailed evidence on China’s regional economic and social geography. The reviewer particularly commends the atlas’s production quality, cartographic clarity, interagency data integration, and innovative synthesis of multiple variables, as illustrated by maps of electricity networks, grain flows, port capacity, waste disposal, foreign trade, and coastal investment. Several limitations are also identified: sources for underlying statistics are often omitted; maps of overall or sectoral per capita income, poverty, and food relief are absent; some social indicators are presented as absolute totals rather than population-standardized measures; and a few variables lack adequate definitions. Despite these shortcomings and the practical risk of separating the accompanying booklets from the volume, the atlas is judged indispensable for research libraries. It offers both an authoritative overview of China’s economy and a powerful basis for investigating spatial inequality, uneven development, and coastal–interior tensions.
Clifton W. Pannell; Paul L. Knox · 1995
This is an academic review of The National Economic Atlas of China (Oxford University Press, 1994), compiled by the Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other agencies. The review notes that the atlas, a key volume in the National Atlas Series, utilizes approximately 100 million bytes of data from 1985-1990, processed with GIS techniques, to present 265 maps illustrating the spatial patterns of China's restructuring economy. Coverage includes resources, agriculture, industry, transportation, commerce, urban construction, environment, and education. The review praises its cartographic virtuosity and data accuracy, deeming it a definitive reference on China's economic geography. However, it also identifies flaws, including inconsistent mapping in sparsely populated western regions, overly complex multivariate maps, and the lack of post-1990 data.
Unknown · 2014
The article recounts the revival and completion of China’s national atlas program after the project was restored as a key national research initiative in 1981. Conceived as an integrated series of relatively independent general, physical, agricultural, economic, and historical atlases, it drew on new data and production methods and involved hundreds of institutions, editors, and specialists. The agricultural, economic, general, and physical volumes appeared successively, with the economic and physical atlases also issued in English. The author presents the series as a comprehensive synthesis of Chinese knowledge about nature, population, the economy, society, and history, emphasizing its value for planning, research, education, and international scholarly exchange. Awards and favorable assessments from international cartographers are cited as evidence of its quality, while the project is also credited with stimulating atlas production and training a generation of Chinese cartographers. Overall, the author regards it as an unprecedented national scientific and cultural achievement and a milestone in modern Chinese cartography.
