Tong Shiheng (童世亨; April 18, 1883 - March 20, 1975) was a Chinese self-made cartographer and publisher active in Shanghai in the early 20th century. He was born to a Chinese scholarly family in Jiading District, China, on March 12th, 9th year of Guangxu. He studied at Nanyang College before being sent to Japan to study cartography. Tong return to China in 1913, when he established the Sino-Foreign Map Bureau in Shanghai on Si Ma Road (Fuzhou Road). In 1915, Zhang Yuanji (Yüan-chi Chang; 張元濟; 1867 - 1959), an important Chinese reformer and general manager of the prominent Commercial Press, invited him to invest in the company. Tong invested 40,000 Silver Dollars and folded his map publishing operations into the larger Commercial Press, creating the Map Bureau. Under Tong Shiheng, the Commercial Press Map Bureau issued dozens of practical maps focusing on China, Shanghai, political events, the world, and more. More by this mapmaker...

Commercial Press (1897 – Present) (商务印书馆) is a publisher active in China from the late 19th century to present. It is considered to be China's first modern publisher, and was the largest publishing house in modern China, at the forefront of educational, scholarly, and literary development from 1900 to the 1950s. The Shanghai based press was founded in 1897 by Xia Ruifang who received venture capital from a Japanese firm. The firm immediately started amassing a collection of rare books which it republished using modern presses. It also introduced numerous periodicals ranging form the Eastern Miscellany (東方雜誌) to Youth Magazine (少年雜誌). It proved quite successful and, in 1914, Xia Ruifang attempted to buy out his Japanese investors. This resulted in his assassination shortly afterward. Nonetheless the press became a wholly Chinese organization under the reformer Zhang Yuanji (Yüan-chi Chang; 張元濟; 1867 - 1959), who succeeded Xia Ruifang in running the press. During World War II, during the January 28th Incident, the press and its collection of rare books was destroyed by Japanese bombers. Even so, by this time the press had expanded to multiple offices, including branches in Singapore, and was able to continue operating. During the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976), the Commercial Press was relocated to Beijing, and ceased all mapping operations. The press remains in operation today and has become a large international concern focused on the publication of Academic works. They now publish under the imprint Commercial Press International Limited. Learn More...