Towards Measuring and Visualizing Sustainable National Power—A Case Study of China and Neighboring Countries

Abstract

This paper presents a new perspective of national power-sustainable national power (SNP)-emphasizing both the traditional comprehensive national power (CNP) and social and environmental sustainability. We propose a measurement to quantify the SNP based on the measurement of comprehensive national power and a sustainable adjusted index. In addition, density-equalizing maps are adopted to visualize the sustainable national power of countries in order to gain a better understanding for its current state and future development from a cartographic perspective. China and its neighboring countries are selected as a case study area. The results show that China outperforms other countries in most of the CNP dimensions but performs poorly in various SNP-adjusted dimensions within the study area. The composite score shows that China is with the highest regional SNP, followed by Japan, Russia, South Korea and India. Furthermore, time series of cartograms reveal evidence showing power transitions among countries. In addition, the effectiveness of cartograms for cartographic communication is discussed.

National Power Analysis of ASEAN Member States with Entropy-Weight-Based ARAS During 2017-2021

“…Single-variable approaches have intrinsic limitations as they solely focus on a singular aspect of national power, thereby failing to capture the diverse dimensions of countries. A composite indicator is necessary to evaluate nations' comprehensive competitiveness and influence (Liao et al, 2015). National power is the cohesive amalgamation and centralized manifestation of the multifaceted and intricate elements characterizing a nation's political, economic, societal, cultural, ecological, value-oriented, and historical aspects.…”