Chart - Increase, Decrease & Net-Change of Cultivated Land by Province, 1988-95

Source: State Land Administration, Statistical Information on the Land of China in 1995. Beijing, 1996. And equivalent reports for 1988 to 1994.
Note: "Construction" includes all kinds of infrastructure, industrial areas and residential areas. In the original data tables this category includes all construction by state-owned units (cities, towns, mining and factories, railways, highways, water reservoirs, public buildings) and constructions by rural communities (rural roads, township and village enterprises, rural water reservoirs, offices, education and sanitation, rural private resident housing).

This chart displays the cumulated land-use change in China's provinces between 1988 and 1995. The provinces are ordered according to their net-change in cultivated land (gray bars). Xinjiang had the highest net-increase in cultivated land between 1988 and 1995 - Shaanxi had the largest net-decline. Big net-losses in cultivated land were also reported from Inner Mongolia and Jiangsu province.
This net-change in cultivated land was the result of sometimes much larger increases and decreases that happened simultaneously. In the Heilongjiang province, for instance, the net-decline was relatively small; but actually much land was lost due to disasters and due to conversion into grassland and forest land. The losses, however, where partly compensated by reclamation which added new cultivated areas.
A similar situation was reported from Yunnan, where the cultivated area increased. Nevertheless there were large losses of cultivated land due to disaster and conversion. They were, however, over-compensated by large reclamation of cultivated land. See also: Fisher, G. / Chen, Y. / Sun, L. (1989): The balance of cultivated land in China during 1988-1995. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Interim Report IR-98-047

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