About Us
Mapping Global China is an open research and public-engagement initiative for understanding how China engages with the world.
We bring together scholarship, data, maps, and multimedia storytelling to examine how China's global presence is built, experienced, negotiated, and governed across different regions and sectors.
Our aim is to make rigorous research on Global China more accessible and more connected: across disciplines, across regions, and between researchers and the wider public. Mapping Global China provides a common platform for scholars, students, educators, journalists, policymakers, practitioners, and anyone seeking to better understand China's changing role in the world.
Our Vision
China's global engagement cannot be understood through a single map, discipline, region, or narrative.
Our vision is to build an open and collaborative platform through which people around the world can map, research, visualize, and debate Global China.
We combine geographically grounded data with research and storytelling, while building an international community of scholars and partners who contribute different regional, disciplinary, and methodological perspectives. Our goal is not simply to document China's presence abroad, but to create the tools and knowledge needed to understand its connections, consequences, and transformations.
What We Do
Our work is organized around three complementary forms of knowledge.
How We Work
Mapping Global China is collaborative by design.
Our platform brings together an international network of researchers, students, universities, research institutes, journalists, and public-facing organizations. Partners contribute regional expertise, datasets, research, methodological innovation, and new ways of communicating knowledge. We are committed to making our resources as open, accessible, and reusable as possible for research, teaching, journalism, and public discussion.
We also recognize that Global China is complex, politically sensitive, and frequently contested. Maps and datasets are never neutral representations of the world. We therefore seek to make our sources and methodologies transparent, acknowledge uncertainty and gaps in the evidence, and create space for multiple interpretations.
Our aim is not to advance a single narrative about China, but to provide evidence, tools, and perspectives that enable people to ask better questions.
Our Network
Mapping Global China works with researchers and institutions around the world to expand the geographic and intellectual reach of the project. Our collaborations include:
- China FilesCollaboration on analysis, storytelling, and public engagement on Global China.
- Millennium Nucleus on the Impacts of China in Latin America and the Caribbean (ICLAC), ChileSupporting collaboration and research on China–Latin America relations.
- University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED), TashkentContributing to our growing research network on China and Central Asia.
- Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)Supporting research exchange and engagement on China in Latin America.
- Observa China 观中国Contributing to dialogue and knowledge exchange on China and Brazil.
Our network continues to grow through research clusters, conferences, collaborative datasets, publications, and regional partnerships.
Supporters
Mapping Global China is an independent research initiative supported by grants and institutional contributions from organizations committed to advancing research and public knowledge. We gratefully acknowledge support from:
Their support has enabled the development of Mapping Global China's research, datasets, mapping infrastructure, international collaborations, educational resources, and public-facing work.
Support Our Work
Help us keep knowledge about Global China open and accessible.
Mapping Global China works with the Center for Global China, a New York-based tax-exempt nonprofit corporation dedicated to advancing knowledge and education about Global China.
Donations through the Center for Global China help support Mapping Global China's open-access maps and datasets, research collaborations, educational resources, public programming, and the development of new ways to make rigorous research accessible to audiences around the world.
Your support helps us build an independent, international platform for understanding Global China.
Join the Community
Get involved with Mapping Global China by creating a story map, joining a research cluster, contributing a research brief, partnering to visualize your work on our platform, or subscribing to stay connected.
You can also support our mission with a donation, helping us keep our maps, data, research, and public resources open and accessible.
Connect
Whether you are a researcher testing a question, a student learning new methods, a journalist looking for context, or simply interested in understanding China's global engagement, we invite you to explore, contribute, and become part of the Mapping Global China community.