Inspiration from Digital Earth
“数字地球”的启示

This paper expounds some inspirations from Digital Earth, including strategic view, position of big power, self reliance & technical absorbing, blind following, importance of reorganization, etc. The author's ideas are as follows: At first, we must have macroscopic & overall view of China's development, analyzing the influence of DE to China, so as to lead China's way of construction in a global oriented mode. Secondly, we should keep calm and make definite scheme about Digital Earth, and not follow the wave or DE blindly, thus utilize the idea of DE scientifically and rationally. Thirdly, in order to maintain its position of big power in the world, China should accomplish our scientific objectives, such as strengthening our development & construction on National Earth Observing System, Nation Spatial Data Infrastructure, etc. Fourthly, we should not only absorb and import the technologies from the developed countries, but also develop our own software & hardware system in self reliance way, and thus can construct Digital China successfully. Finally, we also have to make reorganization on administrative mechanism, intelligent data, science & technical units, as well as different academic realm. A wholly new science, Earth Information Science, will be created in the process of reorganization.