Journal to review EdUHK research paper citing Hong Kong map without Victoria Harbour

Journal that published paper last July will assess complaints, while EdUHK defends map’s focus on administrative boundaries, not coastlines

A spokesman for the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications said on Wednesday that its “assessment is ongoing”, while EdUHK defended the map, saying it was neither a distortion nor an error but a cartographic characteristic based on administrative boundaries rather than land-outline or coastline data.

An academic who spoke on condition of anonymity told the SCMP last week that the paper by Wang Cong, an associate professor at EdUHK’s department of Chinese language studies, was supported by the Research Grants Council (RGC), a non-statutory advisory body under the University Grants Committee.

The paper was published last July and included a “highly absurd and severely flawed map of Hong Kong”, the complainant said.

“The Victoria Harbour we are all familiar with is completely missing. Anyone with basic knowledge of Hong Kong geography can immediately spot the severe distortions and inaccuracies in the ‘map of Hong Kong’ used in the text.”

The paper examined how the endangered Tanka language spoken by Hong Kong’s traditional boat people had distinct sound patterns, but how frequent daily contact with Cantonese had caused younger generations of Tanka speakers to adopt more Cantonese words and sounds, putting their language at risk of disappearing.

The SCMP has reached out to Wang for comment.