Abstract: Since 1991, a total of 63 foundation projects of cultural geography have been supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NFSC), one of the highest levels of research support in China, including 47 projects in Natural Science and 16 projects in Social Science, reflecting the development trend in the field of cultural geography, and advancing the growth of cultural geography literatures in the past 20 years. This research explores the funding characteristics and the current regional distributions of cultural geography research in China under the support of the NFSC by examining the quality of the production of NSFC by text analysis. A knowledge production function was used to measure the actual performance of project items by explaining the inputs and outputs of the subjects. Our research finds the optimistic trend that scholars supported by the fund generally make output efficiently. Most of the research institutions of cultural geography are located in the coastal cities, in a few research centers which have delivered key researchers. Much of cultural study area covered in the east, especially in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, while the central and western regions of China are less studied. The projects are becoming interdisciplinary, in both social sciences and applied subjects. This result of this paper reflects the academic track of Chinese cultural geography in the past 16 years, providing a reference for the relevant fund applications and for understanding and grasping the development trends of cultural geography.

Key words: cultural geography, development trends, knowledge production, national natural science foundation, national social science foundation