The 4th China-Japan-Korea Joint Conference on Geography was held at the School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), in Guangzhou between 9-12 December, 2009. A total of 156 participants attended this conference, among them 68 came from Japan or Korea.

The theme of this conference, ‘The Post-crisis East Asian Geography: Challenge and Outlook’, included a number of issues such as environment change and greening, region and city development, transformation of East Asian society, culture and economy, geographical methods and so on.

The main conference venue was set at SYSU including three branches, while the sessions included Human Geography, Physical Geography, Landscape, Tourism and Geography, GIS and Visualization, and so on. Two poster sessions were set for the conference. About 80 participants published their researches, who came from both oversea and Chinese institutions.

With the largest number of participants in the history of China-Japan-Korea joint conference on geography, and as the first time after its upgrading from just for young geographers to general geographers, the 4th CJK-conference further consolidated the periodical communication and cooperation between the three nations. It provided good opportunities for geographers of both China and overseas to show their recent outcomes. Particularly, through this conference, young geographers from the three countries achieved a good experience to share their understandings, knowledge and achievements.

By  LI Zhigang, ZHAO Xin