Hello everyone, I've come here after having no luck asking on other sites.

I'm a PhD student in the UK, working on Chinese geopolitics.

I'm looking for mapping software that will allow me to produce a few maps of China and the South China Sea. Some maps will have provinces shaded in different colors. Others will have locations or resources, pipelines and rail-lines. Of course, software that included this data would be even better. I will also be showing the rail-lines and pipelines extending across Europe and Shipping lanes to Africa.

I don't need an overly complex work suit. I want to produce something like what i see on the BBC website an other new sites.
I've seen a few that are good for North American and Europe but not for all countries.

I've tried SmartDraw 2013 but it only has country maps of China and doesn't included provinces.

Interactive map: iMapBuilder appeared to be better at first, at least it has provinces in the map of China. It is based off of Gmaps v2 uses google maps. The zoom is an issue though as I have to choose between losing all detail or only showing one part of the map of China. It appears to be designed for websites.