On December 21, reporters learned at a press conference that the “Jiangxi Province Territorial Spatial Plan (2021-2035)” (hereinafter referred to as the “Plan”) was officially approved by the State Council of China on September 15. This is Jiangxi Province’s first provincial-level territorial spatial plan that integrates multiple planning frameworks into one. It serves as the overarching policy and blueprint for the protection, development, utilization, and restoration of Jiangxi Province’s territorial space, playing a pivotal role in linking the national territorial spatial planning outline with the formulation of municipal and county-level territorial spatial plans and related specialized plans, while also ensuring overall coordination and integration.
　　Based on the “Three Zones and Three Lines” framework, the Plan specifies that by 2035, Jiangxi Province’s cultivated land holdings will not fall below 40.0459 million mu, of which the area protected as permanent basic farmland will not be less than 35.4543 million mu; the area within the ecological protection red line will not be less than 41,200 square kilometers; and the expansion factor of urban development boundaries will be kept within 1.3 times the scale of urban construction land as of 2020.
　　With a focus on building a high-quality land spatial layout for Jiangxi Province, the “Plan” takes resource and environmental carrying capacity as its foundation and optimizes and refines the main functional zones as well as the spatial layouts for agriculture, ecology, and urban areas.
　　In terms of agricultural spatial planning, we will establish an agricultural spatial pattern featuring “Five Zones and Three Belts,” strengthening the protection of cultivated land in five key agricultural production zones: the Poyang Lake Plain, the Ganfu Plain, the Jitai Basin, the Southern Jiangxi Hilly Basin, and the Western Jiangxi Hilly Basin. We will also cultivate three ecologically distinctive agricultural development belts—Eastern Jiangxi, Northwest Jiangxi, and Southern Jiangxi—and promote the construction of demonstration bases for green and organic agricultural products, thereby comprehensively enhancing our capacity to ensure the supply of grain and other important agricultural products.
　　In terms of ecological spatial planning, we will consolidate the ecological protection framework of “One River, Two Centers, Five Rivers, and Three Barriers,” promote the construction of a beautiful Yangtze River shoreline along the Jiangxi section, strengthen the comprehensive protection of the two core ecological zones—Poyang Lake and the source regions of the Ganjiang, Dongjiang, and Beijiang rivers—and coordinate the ecological conservation and restoration efforts for the five major river systems: the Ganjiang, Fu River, Xinjiang, Rao River, and Xiu River. We will also reinforce the three mountainous forest ecological barriers in northeastern Jiangxi, western-northwestern Jiangxi, and southern Jiangxi, thereby laying a solid foundation for safeguarding national and regional ecological security.
　　In terms of urban spatial planning, we will refine the urban development pattern of “one circle, two belts, and four clusters,” strengthening and optimizing the Nanchang metropolitan area. We will also promote the Shanghai-Kunming and Beijing-Jiulong urban development belts to enhance their capacity for attracting and concentrating resources and factors. Furthermore, we will accelerate the development of the four major urban clusters—Ganzhou, the Xinjiang River Valley, Xinyi-Pingxiang, and Jitai—thus establishing an urban system characterized by rational division of labor, complementary functions, and coordinated development among large, medium-sized, and small cities as well as small towns, and creating urban spaces that are livable, resilient, and smart.
　　In alignment with the requirements for building “three major highlands” and implementing “five major strategies,” the Plan also outlines specific measures for connecting with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and promoting the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The Plan calls for strengthening spatial cooperation among adjacent provincial regions, fostering and upgrading major open platforms, and accelerating the construction of the Jiangxi Inland Open Economy Pilot Zone. It places particular emphasis on planning and developing three major channels for opening up to the outside world—the southeast, northwest, and southwest routes. The Plan will advance the construction of transportation infrastructure, focusing on key open platforms such as airports, shipping centers, and land ports in Nanchang, Ganzhou, Jiujiang, and Shangrao, while reinforcing spatial support for these large-scale transportation facilities and logistics hubs. Furthermore, the Plan will implement the principle of “jointly pursuing large-scale protection rather than large-scale development” along the Yangtze River, working closely with Hubei, Anhui, and Hunan provinces to strengthen joint prevention, control, and treatment of Yangtze River pollution. The Plan will also promote joint prevention and control efforts at the headwaters of inter-provincial rivers and further refine ecological compensation mechanisms for cross-provincial river basins such as the Dongjiang, Lushui, and Changjiang rivers.
　　To enhance the modernization of the spatial governance system and governance capacity, the Plan clearly stipulates unified control over land use in territorial space. It proposes establishing and improving a reserve system for permanent basic farmland, implementing mechanisms linking increases in construction land with reductions elsewhere and linking increases in existing land stocks with new additions, and introducing supporting policies such as management measures for ecological protection redlines and urban development boundaries, thereby strengthening the operational feasibility of plan implementation. At the same time, the construction of an “integrated map” implementation and supervision system for territorial space planning at both the provincial and municipal levels will be completed concurrently, reinforcing comprehensive management throughout the entire planning implementation process.
　　“Next, our province will as soon as possible complete the approval of county-level land and space master plans, accelerate the preparation and implementation of detailed plans, township plans, and village plans, and promote the coordinated advancement of relevant special plans. We will further refine supporting policies for plan implementation and enhance the assessment and early-warning systems, comprehensively strengthen the management of plan implementation, improve the level of planning management, and provide spatial guarantees for our province’s high-quality economic and social development,” said Zheng Binyong, Deputy Director of the Jiangxi Provincial Department of Natural Resources.