Global environmental change and sustainable development are both critical challenges human beings are facing. Aiming at the further development of the Earth System science, the new IGBP is trying to combine the two issues as well, by providing scientific basis to the sustainable development. According to the international trend and the situation in China, the global change researches of China in next phase should focus on the key scientific issues with both international significance and regional distinction, such as water cycle and water issues, human activities and regional carbon cycle process, Monsoon Asia under human activities and climate change, land use/cover change and terrestrial ecosystem change, human activity and aerosol, marginal seas/ costal zone and human activity, impacts of global changes and human adaptation, past global changes and the Chinese Civilization, scientific support for the construction of all-round well-off society and the international negotiation on reduction of green house gas emission, and the basic information platform for the research on the interaction of global changes and human activities.