Based on the data of intensive use of cultivated land in China from the published papers collected in literature database of CNKI, methods of documentation, network retrieval and comparison are employed to summarize the main contents, basic characteristics and developing trends of the researches on the intensive use of cultivated land in China. The results show that: 1) Both journal articles and thesis increased in recent 30 years, but the number of papers published in the core periodical was limited, and the core author group had not yet formed and academic level needs to be further promoted; 2)In general, the development of the theoretical research lags behind that of the empirical research; 3)The literatures based on the large scale research was more than these on the medium scale, while the small scale researches based on field plots were the least. The regions of empirical studies were extended and balanced gradually; 4) Although there are many kinds of evaluation models and evaluation indexes, the uniform theoretical standards need to be developed for the empirical research method, and more attentions should be paid to the applicability and practicability of different methods for different units and verification of results. The researches on the mechanisms with quantitative analysis from comprehensive perspective, scale and field and integrated innovation of research method should be enhanced in future.