ABSTRACT
China’s ongoing process of land development has been inseparable from the major institutional changes made since the 1980s. It is also conditioned upon the existing resource base and its changing utilization. As such, the complex process of China’s land development must be understood against the backdrop of not only the discursive restructuring of the national political economy but also profound changes in land resource conditions. This chapter utilizes data obtained from the first national land survey to evaluate the structural and spatial changes of land use in China over the past two decades. Special attention is paid to the historical, geographic, and political contexts against which changes in land use have taken place.
