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Africa

Talk The Walk Interview: Impact of Zheng He’s Voyages and Chinese Global Exploration in the Pre-Columbian Era: Evidence from an Ancient World Map:  China-US Relations

Although, Dr Wang is an academic with writings and speech aimed at the academia, she understands that those mediums might be less approachable to the general public. As such, she engages in more casual formats with the aims of making her findings reachable and enjoyable to all.

In this interview, Dr Wang discusses how many of her arguments, including the importance of the Ming figure, Zheng He (鄭和), influenced or proceeded the European Age of Discovery and what it means to us in this age of rising Sino-Western tensions.

A Chinese-based world map depicts Africa in 1433

Africa is one of those places that those, in the Global North, either do not think about or only have a superficial knowledge about. However, like any other human-inhabited continent on earth, Africa is made up of many countries and has a very long history. In today’s paper, Dr Wang takes us on a journey to the early days of Sino-African exchanges. The Chinese-based world map Kunyu Wanguo Quantu 《坤輿萬國全圖》or Complete Geographical Map of All the Kingdoms of the World is long thought to be a copy of European maps. However, Dr Wang argues the map is derived from Chinese sources that originated in the year 1433, during the last of the seven Ming voyages.