Comment by Cai Yunlong (My mentor) and He Gang
Jiang Zemin, former president of the People's Republic of China, published a leading article in Science titled Science in China, in which he pointed out that ′An historic, unprecedented transition is unfolding in present-day China. We face pressing imperatives--the restructuring of the national economy, the rational use of our resources, the protection of our environment, the coordinated economic development of different regions, the alleviation of poverty, and the raising of living and ethical and cultural standards across our diverse country--all of which produce an urgent need for the development of science and technology.′
Vast territory, complicated and various landscape, large population, great regional differences in socio-economic development, and a period of high developing speed and great social economic transition with severe contradictions between human and natural, urban and rural areas, regional differentiation, economic growth and social fair, and the impact of globalization, all these great national conditions and their trends need coming up to understanding and be solved from a geographical perspective. Go deep into studying the spatial-temporal differentiation law of Chinese geography, releasing the evolutive mechanism of the human-nature relation of China, predicting the scene of Chinese geography in a certain future period scientifically, are of extremely important scientific value to the establishment of countermeasure to the sustainable development of China under the global change tendency.
Seen from the international background, global change, including the global environmental change (especially the climate change), global economic integration, global geopolitics structure change, are the current concerns and focuses of the scientific circle and decision circle. Geographers studies the global change from regional comprehensive impact and response, and ′Global change, regional challenge′, ′Thinking globally, acting locally′ have been becoming the important perspectives of geography.
Global change studies should work in policy-making, and what the policymakers concern most is the question correlating with specific regions and places. Therefore, on one hand, special attention should be paid to the comprehensive regional research, in order to developing new perspectives, to clarifying the scientific questions at the regional and local scales, to concentrating on the critical districts, the fragile districts and the focus districts, and to facing the synthesis of multi-disciplinary and multiple spatial scales.
On the other hand, comprehensive geographical studies should be launched at the unique problems in unique areas for their geographical advantage, where unique innovative achievement can be potentially drawn. Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, loess plateau, southwest Karst area, the Yellow River Basin, the Northwest district, the Yangtze River basin, etc., usually considered as unique areas of China, are not only the important areas of China development, but also the concern areas of the international academia. Recently, a provident research, sponsored by the Department of Development Planning of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and organized by Center for promoting and developing Science and Technology of China shows that: In the following ten years, China's socio-economic development will produce ten major demands to science and technology (2004).
1 Industrial optimization and promotion
Industrial optimization and promotion problems in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries of China, mainly in manufacture, will be the theme in the following ten years. Industrial Geography studies the factors, the conditions, and the position characteristics of Industrial Park, and researches the industrial development conditions and regional development mechanism from position decision, spatial strategy and spatial structure of enterprises, industrial policy and regional policy of government, which plays an important role in the industrial optimization and promotion of different regions of China, position chosen, spatial connection and promote regional and industrial competitiveness, etc. In addition, with further ongoing of the market economy and improvement of the living standards, etc., the tertiary industry has been becoming more and more important. Marketing, consumer behavior, logistics, symbolic environment, etc. have become the focuses of geographical study. Enterprises are a main pillar of the market economy edifice, so it has been an important research object of American-European economic geography all the time, and formed a branch called enterprise geography studies position and strategy of enterprises. Its present important topics include clusters, spatial-temporal management, spatial form of enterprises and spatial organization of the trans-corporations, etc.
2 Agriculture development
Chinese agriculture has turn to green, safe, standardized and high-efficient, and the relevant technological demands include: informationize agriculture, green agriculture, secure agriculture, standardized technology, agricultural product process technology and the technological innovations in traditional agriculture such as famous, special, rare, and excellent products. Restricted by the synthesis influence of the nature, technology and economic conditions, agricultural production has strong regional character. Agricultural geography studies the rule of regional differentiation, regional differences characteristics and their form, formative conditions and developmental and transformative law in agricultural production, in order to carrying out the principle of taking measures to local conditions to real agricultural production, which can make contribution to the transition and upgrade of China different regional agriculture in future.
3 High-tech industry development
The influences that high-speed technological progress brings to socio-economic spatial process demands urgently to be known and explained, also a question geographer must and can work with. At present, the high and new technology industry of China, mainly produces the peripheral equipment and assembly etc., situates at the downstream stage of that of the world, with the research and development of key technology and key parts are nearly all grasped by the developed countries. Digital division in IT expands, so it is extremely urgent to improve the competitive capacity of high-tech industry of China in order to raising its national competitive capacity. Geographical information science will play an important role in promoting the industrial technical level. Economic geography studies the aggregation of high and new technology under globalization and information revolution, and the forming and development of learning and innovative areas, which can help China to decide the development strategy and regional arrangement of high and new technology industry.
4 Press of international trade
After its entry to WTO, China faces a more open world. Even the labor-intensive products, comparative advantage of China, will be challenged more by other developing countries. What’s even more critical is the export of China always limited by non-tariff trade barriers set by developed country, such as the technological barrier, green barrier, etc. Keeping its comparative advantage or evading the non-tariff trade barriers, need to guarantee the comparative advantage in international trade through technological progress. Commercial geography, studies the commodity productions′ regional distribution, international market condition, international trade flow trends, international trade relations, geo-economic links, national competitiveness, country differences of non-tariff trade barriers, etc. Surely it will contribute to keeping the comparative advantage of China in the international trade and evading the non-tariff trade barriers.
5 Urbanization
As an inexorable trend goes with its economic development, China has been entering a period of high-speed urbanization followed with a series of sharp contradictions urgently call for scientific realization and solution. Urban geography studies the form and development of cities, the spatial structure and overall arrangement, the course of population gathering and urbanization, the designated function of city, the size and type of cities, urban system, urban planning and total layout of cities, distribution of cities, relation between construction and environmental protection, etc. Regional development research that geographers specialized in is crucial to urbanization studies, because of the affinity between urban research and regional study with the city core of the region and the region background of the city. Spring up in 1980s, concepts such as new regionalism, regional innovative system, industry district, learning region, knowledge overflow, etc. provide not only policy recommendations for China's urbanization but also scientific basis for planning and construction of all kinds of cities. The main demands for technology in urbanization include: information technology in city management; environmental protection technology, especially the technology of garbage disposal in urban environment and sanitation protection; technology in urban infrastructure construction. Geographical information sciences, involving geographical information system, digital city and virtual city, etc., can do something in meeting the demands above-mentioned.
6 Population health
Food security, public health, prevention and cure of some serious diseases and the aging trend, have already been the prominent problems in China's social development process which call for setting up and strengthening corresponding warning system and public health system, enhancing research on the medical science and technology of health care, developing new craft for food processing and new technology for measuring control, concerning technology demands for an aging society and the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine. Medical and health geography studies the geographical distribution and its change of human disease and health status, the emergence, prevalence of diseases and the health status change and the relation with geographical environment, medical health institution and region of facilities dispose and regional development, geographical information system of medical treatment and disease monitoring, pre-warning, etc.; population geography studies the size and quality of population, population growth, spatial-temporal differences of the population composition and its relation with geographical environment, etc. Medical geography and population geography will play an important role to meet the health demands of the population.
7 Integrated utilization of resources and social sustainable development
Developing water-saving technology and equipment with low cost, improving sewage disposal in order to alleviate contradiction between the supply and demand of water resources; improving the comprehensive recycled utilization ratio of mineral resources; reducing the environmental pollution in the exploitation of mineral products, etc. Geography studies the regional combined characteristics of quantity and quality, spatial structure and distributing law, rational distribution, sustainable utilization, maintaining, carrying capacity, and potentiality assessment of natural resources, seeking new resources, energy, predict future trend. It concerns not only natural resources′ action in economic development and development and utilization planning, but also the function of natural resources in the respect of ecological service, society fairness, etc. The important research fields of geography also refers to the relation between economy and environment, including the recycle economy, green manufacture, environmental management and control, political ecology; some important social problems, such as labor, gender (women), community, race, labor union, etc. Geographical studies above-mentioned can offer scientific basis to comprehensive utilization of resources and to social sustainable development decision.
8 Energy structure optimization
Include developing and popularizing the power-saving technology and industry, adjusting the energy structure, improving the energy efficiency, optimizing the structure of energy, developing clean energy technology, reducing pollution, and optimizing the structure of energy industry at the same time. Studying issues such as the regional combined characteristics of the quantity and quality of energy, spatial structure and distribution law, reasonable distribution of energy among regions, sustainable utilization of energy, environmental impact of energy utilization, etc., on the basis of regional disposing, geography can make contribution to energy structure adjustment, energy structure and energy industry structure optimization, and energy utilization ratio improvement, etc.
9 Environment improving refers to geographical demands
Key measures to improving the environment of China in the future include increasing the vegetation coverage rate, preventing and curing land degradation, ecological construction and controlling pollution. Physical geography and environmental geography studies the interaction, dynamic evolution and regional differentiation of elements of natural geographical environment or earth ecosystem, land use and land cover change, prevention and cure of land degradation, biodiversity protection, distribution of pollutant and their environmental impact, prevention of environmental calamity etc., which are the essential basic research and application study to the environment improving.
10 National security to geographical demands
National security is a system composed by subsystems as political security, military security, economic security, scientific and technological security, ecological security and social security, etc. Geographical studies, involves international geopolitics, military geography, regional economy, spatial pattern and diffusion of scientific and technical innovation, structure and function of ecosystem, and spatial arrangement of social affairs, will play a special role in national security system.
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