Abstract:Economic geography is the discipline of studying the location,distribution and spatial organization of economic activities.China’s economic geography has made remarkable achievements in the past 70 years,but there are also some drawbacks.How to seize the new development opportunity to make great progress at the new historical starting point is a common task of China’s economic geographers.This paper reviews the development process of economic geography within the international academic community,and has found out that its development is greatly influenced not only by the broad socio-economic backgrounds,but also by the advances from other disciplines including economics,and it has solid philosophical foundations.This paper strongly argues that China’s economic geography needs to(1) meet strategic demands of national development,and try to make significant and original contributions to the international academic community;(2)theoretically and empirically study multiple specific issues,and strengthen the scientific basis of the philosophy and methodology;(3)extensively absorb the new knowledge from foreign subjects,but adhere to the basic ideas and methods of geography;(4)be interested in multiple concrete research topics but focus on the core scientific issues;(5)improve academic environments in order to offer a rich and high-qualified talent pool for the great development of China’s economic geography in the coming future.The future major research fields of economic geography in China involve: analysis and simulation of regional sustainable development,inter-regional coordination of interests and compensation mechanisms,impact mechanisms of globalization and financial crisis on regional development,new changes and trends of local economic development,regional response to climate change,recovery management of natural disaster crisis.