This themed issue on Land Use Sustainability in China builds on the papers presented at an internaitonal conference (Pre-International Geographical Union 2016 Conference) on “Land Use and Rural Sustainability”, convened by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xi'an, China on August 17–20, 2016. The conference set out to review the impacts of the transformation of human socio-economic activities on land-use change and associated policy making from both a Chinese and a global perspective. The contributions to this themed issue provide conceptual-theoretical and empirical studies on the topic, covering five themes: key issues of land use and sustainability, urbanization and farmland protection, rural transforamtion and reconstruction, urban-rural interaction in a changing society, and land resources engineering and land use policy. China has undergoneintense socio-economic transformations during recent decades which has affected all sectors of the country’s economy. The rapid urbanization has seriously affected rural areas, leading to the intensification of “rural disease” issues and farmland losses, and the implementation of rural revitalization in China is imperative. In view of this, the papers make a compelling call for more systematic research on land use sustainability and emphasize the challenges for futher research on land use and rural revitalization in China.