Geographical Research, Volume. 39, Issue 2, 217(2020)
The Western-oriented foreign political geography and geopolitics theories provide a good reference and basis for the development of Chinese political geography and geopolitics. In this sense, it is a very vital issue related to the direction-guiding for the disciplines of Chinese political geography and geopolitics, in particular in regards to how to rationally treat the studies of political geography and geopolitics in the West as well as how to correctly handle the relationship between these subjects' localization and internationalization within China. Nevertheless, the current development of China's political geography and geopolitics still has confusion and even dilemma on this issue. On the one hand, the over-reliance on the Western research frameworks and theories has brought certain risks to the discipline construction of Chinese political geography, while on the other hand, we cannot move towards the extreme of closedness or even xenophobia while being cautious about Western research, and most importantly we must break up the trap of "Chinese particularism" while breaking "Westernism". To this end, young scholars engaged in political geography and geopolitical research in domestic Chinese universities and research institutions have voluntarily organized a Youth Forum themed on "The Frontiers of Political Geography and Geopolitical Theories" in 2019, which focused on the references and reflections on the development of Western political geography and geopolitics, and reached preliminary conclusions. Most specifically, the multi-scale nature of Western political geography topics, the diversity of research methods, the critical spirit of the research atmosphere, the internationalization of research horizons, and the integrity and standardization of research paradigms are worthy of reference for Chinese political geography, and meanwhile Chinese political geographers should avoid the lack of historical perspective, imbalanced knowledge production, inadequate map space expression, excessive discourse analysis, and inadequate solutions to real problems that are identified in the forum discussions. We hope that this discussion will attract more scholars to jointly promote the development of the disciplines of Chinese political geography and geopolitics.
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Zhiding HU, Fenglong WANG, Ning AN, Yu WANG, Tao SONG, Fei PENG, Guangqiang HE, Teng MA, Qi QIN, Chenran XIONG.
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Received: Oct. 20, 2019
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Published Online: Oct. 17, 2020
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