Abstract:Economic geography is one of the most dynamic branches of geography with its diverse study scopes. Such a feature can be attributed mainly to the phenomenon under study, i.e. economic activity, which is ever-changing and displays big spatial differences across countries and even regions. Another feature of economic geography is its inter-disciplinary approach, which considers both physical and human factors. These two features enable economic geography to be an appropriate and necessary tie in the studies of global/regional environmental changes by various disciplines and to be the basis of sustainable development studies at various scales. While the emphasis of economic geography studies in Anglo-American countries is put on theoretical debates, economic geography in China has taken the satisfaction of practical demands as its primary target of development, which makes Chinese economic geographers widely recognized by various government departments. In China, the discipline is experiencing theoretical re-construction as a result of the institutional transformation, and the primary issue contemporarily confronted by the discipline there is regional and urban sustainable development. Future development of the discipline should treat correctly the relationships between satisfying practical demands and academic researches, primary issue and concrete research topics, macro researches and micro case studies, etc.