China is short of cultivated land considering its huge population. Since the
reform in the late 1970s, China has been experiencing rapid nation-wide urbanization.
A large amount of cultivated land has been lost in this social and
economic transition of the past 25 years. Utilizing the first national land resource
survey results for 1996, official land use statistics for 1996-2002 and
agricultural and socio-economic data for 1978-2002, this paper analyzes the
process of cultivated land loss arising from this rapid urbanization, especially
since the late 1990s. The research reveals that non-agricultural construction,
readjustment of the land-use structure within the agricultural sectors and ecological
land-use conversion are the main causes of this land loss; Urbanization
is one of the most important driving forces for farmland loss, as it stimulates
non-agricultural construction and the readjustment of the agricultural
structures. As China’s urbanization has developed to an accelerated phase, it
is certain that much more arable land will change to other uses in the coming
few decades. Much stricter arable land protection regulations and rational
land-use countermeasures should be introduced to slow down arable land loss.