Concerning agricultural regions in China, the work of J. L. BUCK in his “Land Utilization in China” published in 1937 is most popular in Japan. It was accomplished by sample studies of more than thirty years ago, but his work does not lost its value, because it illustrates the agricultural conditions in China at that time objectively and offer good material in comparing with post-war state of agriculture.
However, attempts have been made to illustrate recent land-use pattern in changing China after the war, for instance, Ya. M. BERGER in U.S.S.R. presented an excellent land-use map in his “Kitai” in 1958, and others attempted to classify new agricultural regions in present China. Among them, the work of Prof. C. S. CHEN of Geographical Research Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong published in 1970 is the most recent one. He firstly distinguished three major regions of the Monsoon Region in Eastern China, the North-western Arid Region and the South-western Cold-High Region, and classified them into 19 sub-divisions with more detailed classification in the Monsoon Region (Fig. 3). In the classification of these regions, many agricultural as well as physical factors were taken into consideration, and the result has somewhat similar character to “physical regions of China serving agriculture” rather than agricultural regions, which has been the topic of discussion among Chinese geographers.
In 1962, Kwantung Province was divided agriculturally into three major and six subregions by K. F. CHENG of the Teachers' College of South China. The attempt was based upon actual land-use and crop-pattern, and it seems to be a useful data for future improvement. In the following year, C. C. TENG presented a detailed pattern of present-state agricultural regions of entire China, founded on the co-operative research carried out by Geographical Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science and National Agricultural Section.
It begins with four major regions (the first grade) of Northeast, Southeast, Northwest and Chinghai-Tibet, which are divided into 12 sub-divisions of the second grade, and finally runs into total of 129 sub-divisions of the fourth grade (Fig. 4 and 5). Classification relies upon the latest detailed statistics supplemented by actual field survey of regions, considering the background of physical conditions and historical development of land-use. The bases of classification are effectiveness of temperature, rainfall, soil resources, cropping and livestock system, combination of crops within a year, level of production, various agricultural products of regions etc., to describe roughly in order taken into consideration. The pattern of agricultural regions illustrated by a map is different from that of J. L. BUCK and it is interesting for geographers to investigate the causes of differences.
Discussion was made in the Meeting of the Geographical Society of China in 1963 at Hangchow as to what agricultural regions of present situation have to do with prospective ones. The majority were of the opinion that the present-state agricultural regions are to occupy an important position and be taken as the foundation for researches of prospective ones.
Prospective agricultural regions of entire China are not yet established, and some geographers, government officials and farmers have started cooperatively classification of agricultural regions in many provinces, putting up some words from the writings of MAO Tse-Tung as the slogan, which suggests the urgent need of establishment of prospective agricultural regions in present China.