Abstract：In recent two decades, the mainstream economic geographers in the world have focused their research on the spatial impact of institutional and cultural factors on economic development. The terms such as flexible specialization, networks and embeddedness, regional agglomerations and clusters, regional governance, cultural turn, and relational turn, have frequently appeared in the economic geography literature and international conferences. Bringing these ideas to China's studies, some Chinese economic geographers have published interesting papers.This may be named theory-borrowing approach, which follows the steps of borrowing theories, local case studies, and finding discussion. Chinese geographers have adopted such an approach over a century. How ever, the voice of Chinese economic geographers in international forums has still remained very weak. Is there a possibility for a new approach to promote more critical economic geography in China?Given the uniquely Chinese context for economic geography, this paper suggests a more local-focusing approach, which starts from research on the unique geographical facts in China, explaining the formation by using Chinese philosophy, and comparing the findings with other countries. China possesses many unique geographical phenomena that are worthy being studied academically.These include, for example, regional differentiation generated by fast economic g rowth, the dynamics of the relationship between population, resources and environment, and the local culture and enterprise clusters in rural China, etc. In addition, one should not ignore that economic geography in China has been strongly linked with physical geography. This contrasts Ang lo-American counterpart of social science orientation. Academic research needs scientific attitude and long-time hard working. There are some new trends that would do some harm to renovation of the theory in the study of economic geography in China. Therefore, it is more important to cultivate a group of leading scholars whose main aims are to build the basic theories of economic geography. Finally, the paper argues that the current theories used by geographers in developed countries may not suit China's context. China should produce her own theories in economic geography.
李小建. 国际背景与中国特色的经济地理学[J]. 人文地理, 2004, 19(1): 27-31.
LI Xiao-jian. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2004, 19(1): 27-31.
