Spatial and Temporal Characteristics of China’s Urbanization Development Stage Centered on Land Conversion

China’s urbanization has undergone decades of extensive development, resulting in significant imbalances between urban land conversion and population growth, with a variety of environmental consequences. This study examines the temporal and spatial characteristics of land conversion and population growth in 286 Chinese cities from 1986 to 2010, as well as the possible threats to food security associated with land urbanization at this time. We found that, in China, the rate of urban land conversion far outpaces that of urban population growth, with this imbalance being more prominent in the Yangtze River Basin and cities in the eastern coastal provinces than that in other areas. Although the rate of land urbanization has been higher than that of population urbanization for many years, many cities still have a relatively low construction land area per capita (<50 m2/person), and they are mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Basin. Although large areas of high-quality farmland have been converted to “new cities” without enough immigrants to utilize the developed infrastructure, the impact of this loss of arable land on food production has been insignificant. However, the waste of land caused by blind land expansion without considering population growth is still a cause for concern.