Perspectives on Space and Time in US and Chinese Science - Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience - page 15

resolution for all cities in China have been made for 1990, 2000, and 2010 (Wang
et al. 2012 ). In addition, the 1:1 million vegetation map was compiled by Zhang
( 2007 ) and the 1:1 million landform map by Zhou ( 2009 ). In the meantime, most
paper maps have been digitized and stored in various databases.
However, the temporal aspect of geographical data has lagged behind. This is
reflected in a recent atlas that compiled population census data and environmental
data in order to track changes from 1949 and 2009 (Gong and Liu 2010 ). Although
China has conducted six population censuses since 1952, the finest mapping unit
is at the county level, and population migration data can only be recovered at the
provincial level. This has substantially restricted their use in city planning, not to
mention location-based service analysis. Environmental data have a short history
since 1986 and are limited to only 113 cities. This makes it impossible to have
a comprehensive view of China's environmental change, not to mention forming
widely applicable environmental policies. Recently atmospheric-quality analysis by
third parties using satellite remote sensing has been demonstrated to be a viable
solution (Zhang et al. 2012 ).
The situation with respect to temporal data is quickly improving thanks to the
large number of satellites for environmental observation that are scheduled to be
launched by the Chinese government (Kramer and Cracknell 2008 ), as well as to an
intensification of ground-based observation networks. For example, in the 1990s the
Chinese Academy of Sciences began to establish a network of ecological monitoring
stations (the Chinese Ecosystem Research network) (Sun 2006 ;Yuetal. 2004 ). It
has since grown to 46 stations in various ecosystems that provide data supporting
research for thousands of researchers. Monitoring networks empowered by Internet
and wireless sensor-network technologies serving different functions are being
widely established by governmental agencies. For example, in order to prevent and
control infectious diseases similar to the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(SARS) from causing large-scale damage to public health, China developed in
2004 the Infectious Disease and Emergent Public Health Event Web-based Direct
Reporting System linking all hospitals at township level and above. This system has
been in operation for 9 years and has collected detailed information on 39 infectious
diseases for the entirety of China on a daily basis. Also, many hydrological gauge
stations are based on wireless sensor-network technology.
In summary, traditional Chinese science is empirical, descriptive, and handed
down often privately through family inheritance or imparted from masters to
apprentices. These characteristics are different from western science, which is
experimental, quantitative, and analytic, and in which the spread of knowledge is
rapid through publishing and open speech, that is later transformed into university
lectures, seminars, and workshops. This restricted approach to the spread of knowl-
edge made it hard for new ideas and new technologies to be quickly transmitted in
ancient China. Geographical knowledge in space and time has been acquired only
since the early twentieth century, particularly after 1949, following the widespread
introduction of modern science. The collection of spatial and temporal data has
been dramatically accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century, supported
by modern information technologies.