A Newly updated NASA Night Light map, released last April, which aims to show patterns of human settlement around the globe, has prompted an amusing back-and-forth in the Chinese and Indian media.
The map appears to show that India is brighter than China, leading to confusion on the part of some netizens, reported Chinese news outlet The Paper.
The article paraphrased online comments: “Has India’s level of economic development and power distribution surpassed China? Or is NASA being manipulated?”
None of these, of course, explained the article. In fact, China is way ahead of India by all economic and development indicators.
While the reminder of how far ahead of India China is in terms of economic development was probably unnecessary, the fact that China’s state media felt the need to republish the article in English was not lost on the Indian press.
India’s Economic Times seized on an English language People’s Daily report on the original article, noting that China “feels slighted” by NASA’s map:
“China’s growing unease with India reached an absurd level when it tied itself in knots trying to prove that India looking brighter than China does not mean it is more electrified.
An indicator of electrification, a map from NASA’s Earth’s City Lights project shows India shining brighter than China at night.
However, China’s state-sponsored People’s Daily Online quibbles that it’s China that should look brighter because it’s more electrified than India.”
Amy Siew Yee by your logic then, the USA should look even dimmer as more people there live in high rises then anywhere else in the world. It is just that China has more concentrated population near her coasts and India with almost equal population and one third of land mass looks brighter.
Kapil Gyawali please do not loose your sleep over it!
Amy Siew Yee i am well aware of that bro because we are close neighbour that is why i was amazed because india cannot match china on any of this .
Images do "lie" when angle is wrong. Satalite image captured from top, how does it show the real situation when more ppl are living in highrise (and in cities) building in China compare in india? How about we google image for night scene imagee of top ten cities of both countries. isnt it more accurate.. same for rural areas…Interestingly, while googling images using keyword "rural areas at night in india", you will see picture showing the problem of lack of electricity, people are using gas lamp, while for China you wont see people using gas lamp, because electricity isnt even a problem to talk about.
Kapil Gyawali … in China, more people are living in cities and in highrise building compare in india. In India populations are distributed more even across the country due to the historic fact that India was once states of prince, multiple kingdom occupied the india. Due to this fact, image captured by satalite cannot be justified the real situation of electricity for China, unless the propotion of rural / city population of both countries are equal.
Forget about NASA. A simple way to verify the a close-real situation is to google images the top ten cities night scene for both countries, and do the same for rural areas. Interestingly, while googling images using keyword "rural areas at night in india", you will see picture showing the problem of lack of electricity, people are using gas lamp, while for China you wont see people using gas lamp, because electricity isnt even a problem to talk about.
Great
nasa forget to compare size of both country and population.
When you export all of what you produce, thats what happens �
Images do not lie, And the answer is simple. Both the countries have a similar sized populations, China being only slightly bigger. However China is about 3 times as large as India, and the GDP of course 5 times as large…
maybe it’s a polution , take a look at it
For millinean, India have been burning cow dung in the clear bright nights while the Chinese are still burning fossil fuels that pollute their sky and hence, dims out the light.
Waaaaaaaaa!