Ancient Chinese cartography and colonial erasure: How Eurocentric narratives obscure pre-modern global networks and contemporary geopolitical power structures
Original framing: “What an ancient Chinese map reveals about global history and modern power: Sheng-Wei Wang” — South China Morning Post
The original framing omits the role of indigenous cartographers in pre-modern China and beyond, such as the Mesoamerican codices or the navigational knowledge of Pacific Islander peoples. It also ignores the structural erasure of non-Western historical records by colonial powers, including the burning of the Library of Alexandria's non-Western texts or the suppression of indigenous oral histories. Additionally, the piece does not address how modern geopolitical tensions, such as the South China Sea disputes, are framed through this distorted historical lens.
Low structural omission detected in mainstream coverage.
The narrative is produced by the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper historically aligned with British colonial interests and now owned by Alibaba Group, a Chinese tech conglomerate. The framing serves to reposition China as a historical leader in global exploration, thereby reinforcing its contemporary geopolitical ambitions. This obscures the role of Western academic institutions in perpetuating Eurocentric historical narratives, which have long been used to justify colonial and neocolonial power structures.
Pre-modern global exploration was a multipolar phenomenon, with Chinese, Indian, and Islamic navigators charting trade routes centuries before European expansion. The 15th-century Ming Dynasty's voyages under Zheng He reached as far as East Africa, yet these achievements are often minimized in favor of Columbus and Magellan. The Eurocentric 'Age of Discovery' narrative emerged in the 19th century to justify imperialism, rewriting history to center Europe as the sole driver of progress.
The South China Morning Post's framing of Sheng-Wei Wang's research reflects a broader geopolitical struggle to redefine historical narratives in service of contemporary power dynamics.