Embodied land in China’s provinces from the perspective of regional trade

With the continuous enhancement of regional connectivity, the indirect use of land resources through the pathways of trade in goods and services plays an increasingly important role in the overall utilization of land resources. Despite this, relevant research in this field is still in its infancy, and few papers have addressed this issue. This paper uses a multi-regional input—output model to calculate the embodied land in the 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and eight regions of China from the perspective of regional trade and further analyzes the spatial pattern of characteristics associated with embodied land flows. The results show that the amount of embodied land occupied by China’s inter-regional trade accounts for 21.39% of the country’s total land, and an average of 38.54% of China’s provincial land demand is met by land exports from other provinces. More than 80% of land consumed by Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai is from other provinces. The provinces of Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Hebei are the largest net exporters of cultivated land, forest and grazing and aquatic land, fishery land, and built-up land, respectively (the outflows account for 42.26%, 27.53%, 38.66%, and 35.28% of the corresponding land types in the province); and Guangdong, Shandong, and Zhejiang are the main net importers. The flow of agricultural land (cultivated land, forest land, grazing land, and aquatic land) generally shows a shift from west to east and from north to south. The regions in northeast and northwest China have the largest scale of agricultural land outflows, mainly into East and South China. In addition, 8.43% of cultivated land, 7.47% of forest land, 6.41% of grazing land, 6.88% of aquatic land, and 18.35% of built-up land in China are provided for foreign use through international trade. This paper provides feasible ideas and a theoretical basis for solving the contradiction between land use and ecological protection, which could potentially help to achieve sustainable land use in China.