Unpacking China's land use and trade-driven land transfers through telecoupling

Understanding land use dynamics through the lens of interregional interactions is critical to achieving sustainable territorial development in an increasingly interconnected world. However, most existing studies remain confined to administrative units, failing to systematically account for the spatial decoupling between land consumption and production. This study integrates a multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model with structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics and driving forces of land use in China from 2002 to 2017. By constructing a detailed mapping between economic sectors and land use categories, we trace the intensity, direction, and scale of land flows embedded in domestic trade. The share of interregional land transfers rose markedly from 22.3 % in 2002 to 57.4 % in 2017, revealing a growing reliance on extra-local land resources. The results demonstrate that while China's total land footprint expanded substantially, disparities in land use efficiency and regional dependency have intensified. Coastal provinces increasingly depend on external land through consumption-driven demand, while inland regions serve as net land exporters via resource- and land-intensive production. Technological improvements on the supply side significantly reduced land-use intensity; however, they were outweighed by the expansionary effects of economic growth and structural shifts in final demand. This study contributes methodologically by enhancing the telecoupling framework to incorporate virtual land flows within domestic trade, thereby providing a more nuanced understanding of land use dynamics that extend beyond administrative boundaries. The findings offer policy insights into optimizing the spatial allocation of land resources and guiding differentiated land governance in China and other rapidly urbanizing economies.