History
When GIS first became widely available in the 1980s and 1990s, the only source of geographic data for China was paper maps. Several universities elected to undertake the huge task of digitizing this information so that other researchers could use it.
The two earliest projects were conducted by The Australian Consortium for the Asian Spatial Information and Analysis Network (ACASIAN) at Griffith University and the China Data Center at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. ACASIAN specialized solely in spatial coverages while the China Data Center included GIS coverages as a supplemented to their primary mission of providing Chinese statistical and census data.
There is a great deal of high quality GIS data being produced in China by both government organizations and private companies. Today, China's National Spatial Data Infrastructure Project, uses the WGS84 standard.
In 1991, China's first color Map Editing and Publication System, MapCAD.
In 1995, China's first National Advanced GIS Software, Computer based GIS, MapGIS.
In 2005, The fourth generation of large scale distributed structure GIS, MapGIS 7.0
In 2009, China's GIS new ero -- MapGIS K9.
Read more about this topic: Geographic Information Systems In China
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)