Abstract: The Chinese government launched a series of science and technology research programs to keep pace with the latest progress in world sciences research and solve the key problems emerging in China’s rapid development. Climate change, land surface processes, land use and natural disasters are the academic domains which human-economic geographers mostly devoted themselves to further research. Some important progress in the human- driven mechanism of land surface process and resource environment carrying capacity evaluation has offered a scientific basis for the government’s planning and environmental diplomacy. This paper reviews the major tasks undertaken by human-economic geographers and summarizes the major contributions and social impact of human-economic geography, such as the final consumption oriented research on carbon footprint, system dynamics of human geographical processes, key issues in land use decision making, and resource environment carrying capacity evaluation for disaster-hit areas.

Key words: China, climate change, land surface process, major plans of science and technology, natural disaster, research progress