Pages

Friday, October 22, 2010

Map World: China's Response to Google Maps

First France made their own version of Google Maps and then India followed up with their own.  Now, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has made Map World as their rebuttal to Google.  This Google-rival is probably more neogeography-friendly than the others were at their launch with built in support for tools like feature creators, rulers, map pins, etc.

The resolution for the PRC is very good in most cases.  Foreign lands including the those held by the Republic of China (Taiwan) are not as detailed, however.  Oogle Earth has encountered some problems with the 3D support.  User beware: the website is in simplified Chinese characters and it is hosted by the PRC government.

I went map hopping to see if I could find any interesting nationalism built in the program.  At first it was standard: Taiwan shown as a province, Indian-claimed lands shown as Chinese, etc.  But then I looked at Israel (which is a major military partner of the PRC).  The map shows the 1947 UN partition proposal as the borders!  Yes, the PRC does recognize the "State of Palestine" as declared in the late 1980s but no one in decades has argued for the 1947 proposed borders rejected by the Arab states to be the borders for Israel and Palestine.  The last time I saw the 1947 proposed borders for the State of Israel was in a 1970s Soviet atlas.  This is a weirdness I cannot explain.

Is this official PRC policy?  I do not think so...

1 comment:

sgenius said...

Interesting choice of projection, also. Beats Mercator on some aspects, though.