In newspapers, maps not only convey some additional or supplementary data to the text, but also to accelerate explain news story, promote newspapers readability. Owing to some constraints such as main theme, column widths, deadline, editor's cartographic knowledge and so forth, map quality and design are versatile. According to investigation, the thematic focus of newspaper maps has been dominated in military conflict. In this paper, war maps are collected from United Daily News, China Times and The China Post which were published during 1966-2003. The aim is to discuss the design characteristics of war maps and the cartographic expression change between these periods. The results reveal that lack of scale, lack of projections and lack of orientation are the chief deficiency. Nevertheless, flow lines, airplanes and bombs are the symbols most often employed in newspapers. Besides, color almost replaces pattern function, and DTM is the newest trend to display the landform. But editor's cartographic design ability especially lettering ability is regress significantly. With the advent of printing press and of better instruments, war maps in newspapers make some innovation.