Towards Measuring and Visualizing Sustainable National Power—A Case Study of China and Neighboring Countries

ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information

Hua Liao²  Weihua Dong²  Huiping Liu²  Yuejing Ge¹ 

[1] School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; E-Mail:;Beijing Key Laboratory for Remote Sensing of Environment and Digital Cities & School of Geography, State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; E-Mails:

关键词: cartogram;    social sustainability;    environmental sustainability;    national power;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijgi4031672

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents a new perspective of national power—sustainable national power (SNP)—emphasizing both the traditional comprehensive national power (CNP) and social and environmental sustainability. We propose a measurement to quantify the SNP based on the measurement of comprehensive national power and a sustainable adjusted index. In addition, density-equalizing maps are adopted to visualize the sustainable national power of countries in order to gain a better understanding for its current state and future development from a cartographic perspective. China and its neighboring countries are selected as a case study area. The results show that China outperforms other countries in most of the CNP dimensions but performs poorly in various SNP-adjusted dimensions within the study area. The composite score shows that China is with the highest regional SNP, followed by Japan, Russia, South Korea and India. Furthermore, time series of cartograms reveal evidence showing power transitions among countries. In addition, the effectiveness of cartograms for cartographic communication is discussed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.