Bai Meichu (白眉初; 1875 – 1940): Geographicus Rare Antique Maps

Bai Meichu (白眉初; 1875 or 1876 – 1940) was a prominent cartographer and geographer of the Republican era who wrote or compiled over a dozen works, played a leading role in the Geographical Society of China (中國地學會), and taught at Zhili Women’s Normal School (the predecessor to today’s Hebei Normal University) and Beijing Normal University. Among his major works were A Complete Chronicle of the Provinces and Regions of the Republic of China (中華民國省區全誌, 5 vols. 1924-27). Bai was involved in intellectual and revolutionary circles in Beijing, and came to be friends with Li Dazhao, a professor at Peking University and one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. He is remembered today not only as an important figure in the history of geography in China, but also as a patriot who sought to use geography as a means to challenge foreign imperialism and serve the nation. Bai, who had once published a National Humiliation Map of China (中國國恥圖), is most famous for being the first Chinese geographer to use the now-infamous ‘nine-dash line’ (九段线) in a 1936 map to claim virtually all of the South China Sea for China. His 1936 map was an inspiration for Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist regime, which used it and the nine-dash line in territorial disputes following the end of World War II, a practice that continued with the People’s Republic government after 1949.