Land Use Problems and Intensive Utilization Patterns in the Coastal Regions of China

Being an important kind of resources and as physical foundation to regional social and economic development, land resource and its sustainable utilization play an important role. Especially in coastal regions of China where has large population density, land use pressures resulted from industrialization and urbanization are even more significant. Therefore, researches on optimal and intensive land utilization in coastal regions have both practical and strategic values. In the future 20 to 30 years, China will improve its social and economic level to that of medium-developed countries, and the coastal regions of China will play an important role in the course of reaching this goal. Meanwhile, economic growth and population enlargement will inevitably result in main conflicts between human activities and natural environment, the most outstanding one of those is the sustainable land use problem. Based on the general analysis of current situation of land use in the coastal regions of China, this paper explores the main problems and features of land use, which include: increasing pressure to land use from multiple population, growth of economic density, distinct conflict between urbanization land use and agricultural land use, and so on. Furthermore, the food security situation of coastal regions is analyzed. Main problem is that the food security capacity in coastal regions is degressive. After the estimation of food supply and demand in the coastal regions, it argues that certain amount of cultivated land as 36 million hm~2 has to be reserved to ensure the food security within these regions,even though, this can only provide 90% corn of self-supplying. Moreover, since the urbanization level will be greatly improved in the future thirty years, it is necessary to cope with the relationship between agricultural land use and constructive land use, because the urban expanding has occupied a great many of agricultural lands in the past 20 years. Therefore, several methods for intensive use of urban land,as reconstructing urban land, improving industrial structure, and developing high-efficient industrial parks, are suggested. Finally, it suggests that scientific planning and efficient administration are necessary to realize the sustainable development of land use in the coastal regions of China.