27. Shi jie di shi tu

Bipolar Chinese world map

This vertical world map puts Europe as an appendage of Asia. North America is upside down and cut off from South America, and Africa is eccentric. Here, the ‘Middle Kingdom’ and the Indian Ocean take centre stage. Indeed, around this is the focus of the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, the largest infrastructure project ever launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013. Today, the map is used everywhere, in geography education and in the civil-military satellite navigation system. China has already declared that the sea area around the North Pole is common property of mankind. With a fifth of the world’s population living in China, the country wants to play a prominent role in this polar region. At the same time, Chinese companies are scouring the bottom of the Indian Ocean for deep-sea mining in search of precious minerals. The government is making hefty investments in Antarctica to be at the forefront of future exploitation. This bipolar world map presents a geopolitical vision of the future in which the People’s Republic of China plays the leading role.