The Geographies of Wikipedia in China

This post takes a more detailed look at the geographies of Wikipedia in China. Drawing only on the Chinese Wikipedia, this first map aggregates all geotagged articles at the provincial level.

The pattern is similar to what one might expect. A larger number of articles in Taiwan and the prosperous eastern provinces than than in poorer Western China. What is interesting though is the shift in pattern if we look at the geographies of all geotagged Wikipedia articles in all languages.

Here we see a radical shift in focus. Eastern provinces retain a relatively large number of articles, but it is Tibet and Xinjiang that really stand out. Is this because non-Chinese wikipedians are far more interested in writing about the two autonomous regions than their Chinese speaking counterparts?

It has been demonstrated that there appears to be a correlation between the locations of contributors and the topics that they write about. The fact that most Chinese Wikipedians are from eastern provinces would then seem to explain some of the differences between the geographies of Chinese Wikipedia and all other Wikipedias.

Or can we attribute these differences to either self- or government-censorship? There have certainly already been convincing claims made to that effect.

We plan to revisit this topic at regular intervals in order to map any possible spatial shifts over time. We would also appreciate any comments that help us to shed light on this issue.