In the peri-urban areas, the sprawl of non-agricultural land
is prevalent. Table 2 and Fig. 5 indicate the expansion of nonagricultural
land in Jiangyin and Shunde from 1995 to 2010,
which shows that non-agricultural land expanded 85.8% in Jiangyin
over 15 years, and 127.4% in Shunde. Non-agricultural land grew
fastest during the time period from 2000 to 2005. This was
largely due to the entry of China into the WTO in 2001 which
attracted foreign investment and the demand for land grew
quickly