The Workshop was organised by the Commission of Cartography and GIS of the China Society of Surveying & Mapping and Geoinformation under the sponsorship and support of the Zhengzhou University of Information Engineering, the IGSNRR and the State key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System (LREIS).
Invited academicians, professors, scientists, researchers and graduate students coming from Research Institutes and Labs of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, from Universities, the National Library of China and other Institutions, presented their research on the issue and participated in discussions for future work and cooperation. Academicians Gao Jun and Zhou Chenghu and Profs Qi Qingwen, Sun Qun, Liqiu Meng, Bai Hongye, Gong Yingyan, Lu Liangzhi, Liang Qizhang and Evangelos Livieratos, spoke about the long Chinese cartographic legacy and the echoing of Western cartographic heritage, focusing also on the case of Matteo Ricci’s Chinese World Map in the late 16th and early 17th cent.
After a laborious day, a closing round table discussion on the possibilities of Chinese – European cooperation on relevant issues was concentrated, among various alternatives, on the principles based upon and on the models followed in the European project initiative GRATICULE for transforming cartographic heritage ecosystems for the modelling and transmission of novel cultural assets in the networked digital world, the initiative represented in the Beijing Workshop by Profs Liqiu Meng (TUM – Technische Universität München), Evangelos Livieratos and Chrysoula Boutoura (AUTH – Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) .
The International Cartographic Association was represented in the Beijing Workshop by the Chair of the ICA Commission on Digital Technologies in Cartographic Heritage (E. Livieratos), the Chair of the ICA Commission on Theoretical Cartography (Qingyun Du) and the Vice Chair of the ICA Commission on Atlases (Qingwen Qi)