The "Aeta Geographica Sinica" sponsored by the Chinese Geographical Society came out at the fall of 1934. It is now the oldest leading academic periodical among others within China's geographical circle. Except the missing volumes due to suspension that had to be done during the "Cultural Revolution", Volume 39 is now being published and this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of its initiation. During this period of time, it witnessed historically the development of modern Chinese geograplry. This paper will give a brief account of the development of "Acta, Geographica Sinica" in terms of three historical stages-the initial period of its start publication (1934-1949), post liberation period (1950-1966) and period since its resume publication (1978-present). An overall analysis of the grand total 747 articles published in the journal indicates that 1) papers concerning physical geography predominates, accounting for 60 per cent of the total. Of them the highest number is related to geomorphology and climatology while the proportion of human geography is rather low, being only 18%. However, the proportion of papers on economic geography, especially agroeconomic geo-graphy is comparatively high; 2) after liberation, regional distribution of papers changed greatly in correspondence with the large-scale economic construction and ex-tensive scientific investigation conducted, As a consequence, the number of papers con-cerning western parts and border regions of the country rises more rapidly. Papers dealing with the economically developed areas of the Changjiang River Delta and the Zhujiang River Delta are still constantly increasing; and 3) the comparison and ana-lysis of the contributor’s ages for 522 papers reveals the fact of aging of the contri-butors caused by the cultural revolution.Finally, this paper presents the first conference of the editorial committee held since its resume publication. It points out that under the new situations, the "Acta Geographica Sinica" should be further improved with higher quality and distinctive characteristics. Papers reflecting principal nation-wide subjects on geography as well as being favourable to the realization of the four modernization of China should be comprised with particular emphasis. While those with new contents and original ideas both in theory and practice should be published more frequently. Discussion on the topics closely related to current national economic construction such as the terrainreadjustment, sand control in northwestern China ...... etc should be developed forthe purpose of making the "Acta Geographica Sinica" to have more important bearing on the future development of geography in China.