Land use and land protection laws are an important part of the Chinese legal system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by climate change. China's laws and administrative regulations related to land use have had an impact on the protection of ecological land. The 2060 carbon neutral target has proposed a new vision for China's land use legal system. Both the ‘system to control the total amount of construction land’ and ‘the land use control system’ have seen the role of ecological land with greater protection, so that urban land, agricultural land, and ecological land can develop together. However, these two systems have their own drawbacks and need to be adapted to adequately respond to climate change. Although China's forestry carbon sink trading is gradually prospering, China needs to improve the capacity of land carbon sinks, to strengthen the implementation of the national territory development plan and increase the control of the total amount of construction land. This article aims at providing an overview of the laws and administrative regulations related to land use in China, and how they have been evolving in response to the need to deal with climate change.