A brief introduction to Physical Geography of Arid Land in China

A book, Physical Geography of Arid Land in China, mainly edited by Prof. Xi CHEN from Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences has been published by Science Press in July of 2010.

RECENT ADVANCES IN FLORISTIC PLANT GEOGRAPHY IN CHINA

Floristic plant geography is a discipline which examines the present and past distribution and composition of all plants in a certain area or a country, the origin and evolution of plants on the basis of geological history, especially some important events, e.g. movements of plates, changes between sea and continents, glacier history and emergence of mountains, and its impact on the flora. As a subject, flodstic pant geography is based on

Twenty-five years of progress in geopolitics research： Efforts from China＇s geographers

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics（i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy）, to internal geopolitics（i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography）, to the new geopolitics（i.e., formal geopolitics）, and to recent critical geopolitics（i.e., popular geopolitics）. Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China＇s geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic breakthroughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice（in a problem-focused orientation）, rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses（in a theoretical orientation）, resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China＇s surrounding geopolitical environment.

近年来中国旅游地理学研究进展与展望（英文）

Based on a large number of domestic literature reviews with related research abroad, academic standards and issues awareness have been intensified in domestic tourism geography, disciplinary consciousness and innovation enhancement. Hence, some valuable achievements have been made in the areas of tourism resources, tourism regional system, the spatial structure of tourism, tourism flow, ecotourism, tourism industry, tourism planning and tourism impacts, which strengthened the traditional advantages of research, expanded new areas of research and made research trends diverse. Meanwhile, with innovation of research methods, tourism geography in China is getting more and more internationally-oriented and reflecting Chinese characteristics. Research trends of China＇s tourism geography are prospected： 1） Catering to national strategic needs, persisting problem-oriented, strengthening the metatheoretical research, and building Chinese ＂localization＂ of theory of tourism geography and method system. 2） Introducing and assimilating foreign theories and research methods, while focusing on explaining new tourism phenomena and problems in the domestic socio-economic background. 3） Concerning about the new regional spatial processes of demographic process, social process, and spatial process in new tourism trend. 4） Exploring interactive process and mechanism of man-land relationship and new models to develop territorial space under the tourism impacts. 5） Exploring important research issues of tourism geography in global, national, regional and local scales, from the point of view of spatial differentiation, scale transformation, interaction of man and nature, creating tourism geography interpretation system based on ＂process-structure-mechanism＂ of China. 6） Building theoretical system actively, while strengthening application-oriented research, and focusing on tourism poverty alleviation, tourism and heritage protection, national parks＇ construction and other hot issues. Faced with econometrics research boom, we should return to rational thinking, using big data scientifically, while paying attention to the important role of qualitative evaluation in future research.

在自从 1980s: ，伪造在人口之间的连接学习的中国的人口地理和人的地理

This paper reviews the progress of population geography in China since the 1980 s. The review results suggest that contrary to the common perception of its invisibility and marginalized status in the field, tremendous progress has been made in population geography in China since the 1980 s. Population geographers have made significant contribution to the understanding of a wide range of population issues from geographical perspectives, including migration, urbanization, population distribution, the relationships between population, environment and resources, aging, marriage patterns, and migrants＇ crimes, although such contribution often did not appear in the geographical circle. Furthermore, population geographers have played an indispensable role in revitalizing population studies in China and forging its links to human geography, occupying an important position in this multi-disciplinary field. Population geographers＇ contribution to the areas of migration and urbanization research has been particularly significant, reflected in their leading roles in these areas＇ research. The paper demonstrates that as latecomers in the field after more than 20 years of isolation, population geographers in China have gone through a process of catching up and increasing engagement with developments in social sciences and increasing interaction with social scientists since the 1980 s, and have benefited greatly from it; however, there is a tendency for population geography to be increasingly alienated from the main stream human geography, a phenomenon similar to but not exactly the same as Anglo-American geography in the late 1990 s and early 2000 s. The paper argues that population geography is only half way in the course to forge the links between population studies and human geography, and it needs to return to geographical sciences to strike a healthy balance between the field of population studies and that of human geography, and promote its further development in a multi-disciplinary field.