Recent Progress of Human Geography in China: Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

The great socio-economic transition and the process of globalization have profoundly influenced human geography studies in China. During the transitional period, a large volume of research in Chinese human geography was launched and great progress has been achieved. In this paper, the authors provide a review of recent progress achieved in Chinese human geography mainly in the following fields: urban and regional development, cultural globalization and the ‘cultural turn’, improvement of quality of life and tourism development. As for urban and regional development, urbanization studies during the process of globalization and socio-economic transitional period are of great importance, with the main features of urbanization, urban spatial restructuring and urban social problems. At the same time, this paper summarizes progress in cultural geography against the background of cultural globalization and the trend towards a cultural turn, concerning the expansion of cultural landscape studies, deeper analysis of cultural realms or regions and study of cultural space influenced by the ‘new cultural geography’. In addition, recent progress in tourism geography in China is closely related to its application from a spatial perspective. Finally, several future research directions are highlighted and some suggestions are advanced for the future development of Chinese human geography. To sum up, although considerable progress has been achieved in applied research in recent years, human geography studies in China are still relatively inadequate in theoretical and methodological exploration.