The People’s Map of Global China

The People’s Map of Global China is a website and education resource freely available online. A list of people involved, including contributors as well as funding organizations, can be found here. This website maps the international activities of Chinese businesses or government affairs, to create an idea of “Global China.” The map is interactive and open-access, and is updated with sources from a variety of places including NGOs, journalists, academics, trade unions, etc. This variety of sources lets the project demonstrate the variety of effects of these international activities, allowing for, as the website calls it the “articulation of local voices often marginalised by political and business elites.”

On the map, they have projects sorted by the type of activity being performed, such as energy, extractive, real estate, and other types of activities. These projects are clickable, and photos, descriptions of the project, its impacts, and sources are included on a separate page as the map. The website also includes a “countries archive” which lists countries and their relationship with China, be that political or financial. Finally, the website also includes a blog section called “The People’s Pulse” where essays are posted about updates made to the website itself and projects it features, as well as essays about China’s international engagements.

This website is a great resource for understanding how world power’s interact with others, and how people respond and are affected by these interactions. It focuses on a more modern area than the World History Commons usually does, but may be great for students to understand how history affects the world today.