Decoupling or Displacement? The Shifting Drivers of Cultivated Land Pressure and Potential Degradation Risk in Urbanizing China: From Technological Dividends to Demographic Contraction

ABSTRACT Clarifying the coupling mechanisms among population, cultivated land, and food systems is essential for global sustainability and for understanding land‐system change under post‐demographic‐dividend conditions and rapid demographic transition. Cultivated land pressure (CLP) is a key indicator for assessing this tension. Focusing on five provincial‐level regions in eastern China—Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, and Henan—this study estimates the CLP index at the regional, provincial, and prefecture‐level city scales using data from 2000 to 2024. Drawing on the Kaya identity, a logarithmic decomposition approach is then employed to examine the contributions of population size, cultivated land use efficiency, cropping structure, and cultivated land area to changes in CLP. The results show that CLP in eastern China followed a phased pattern of initial increase, subsequent decline, and eventual stabilization, although substantial regional differences remained. Improvements in cultivated land use efficiency consistently served as the dominant force alleviating CLP, but their marginal mitigating effect weakened in recent years. In some peripheral cities, the direction of the population effect changed, with population contraction beginning to coincide with declining CLP. The pressure‐relieving role of cropping structure adjustment also became more limited, while the continued loss of cultivated land remained a persistent long‐term constraint. Comparisons at the provincial and prefecture levels further reveal a clear pattern of production–consumption differentiation between megacities and major grain‐producing regions, resulting in pronounced spatial variation in CLP. Overall, this study reveals the spatiotemporal evolution of CLP and the changing mechanisms driving it in eastern China. The findings suggest that future food security governance cannot rely solely on conventional output‐expansion strategies, but should place greater emphasis on the coordinated regulation of demographic change, regional specialization, and land resource constraints.