This is a very interesting visualization, which comes from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center, which captures information about travel times for any given area. These sorts of exercises are very interesting, when realizing that it’s easier (faster anyway) to travel from Shanghai to Chicago than it is to travel from Shanghai to certain parts of rural Anhui. The remotest place in the world is in the PRC: the Tibetan Plateau. Note that the scale is non-linear, so the differences between remote and non-remote are even more considerable than appears at first glance. It would be interesting to use the same methodology and restrict travel options to income levels, to examine economic determinants of geographic access.

The blue lines are shipping routes; apparently Shanghai is the third most central port in the world (after the Suez and Panama Canals).