Both maps below show Malaysia highlighted. At 4° Mercator inflates Malaysia by only about 0.44%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Vietnam beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 4°, Malaysia sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
Malaysia: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Malaysia | 330,621 km² | 332,076 km² | 1.00× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Malaysia at about 332,076 km². The truth is 330,621 km², a difference of 0.44% that school atlases carried for centuries.