Abstract: This paper is divided into three parts. The first part of the article is a brief review of the developmental history of ancient and modern cartography in China. It shows that China is one of the earliest countries in the world to create maps. China played an important role in the development of cartography in the world, and has made significant contributions to the development of cartography. Up till the Ming Dynasty in 15^th Century, China's map and cartography had always been ahead of the Western countries, but fell behind only after the Qing Dynasty. The second part of the article describes the rapid development of China's mapping and cartography after the founding of the "New China", including the tremendous achievements in the areas of mapping and creation of national topographic maps, thematic maps and atlases, remote sensing cartography, computer-aided cartography, multimedia electronic maps, mobile communication maps, online maps, and theoretical research of cartography. China has caught up and reached the world's advanced level in cartography. The third part It proposes the direction and adjusted roles of mapping and cartography in China in the new century, and analyzes the opportunities, challenges and prospects of cartography in the era of big data, internet and artificial intelligence. Via visualization of 3D dynamic mapping, big data can show the spatial pattern and regional differentiation as well as temporal and spatial dynamic change of subjects and phenomena, and then make analysis and evaluation, forecast and early warning, zoning and layout, planning and design, management and regulation. Therefore cartography can play an important role in the era of big data. In the future, internet will become the main platform for map creation and application. Maps will be more popular, personalized, intelligent and practical.

Key words: cartography, history, retrospect, prospect, big data, Internet