In China, starting from the mid to late 1990s, the country has
seen a surge of agribusiness and a push toward more commercialized
land use (Chin, 2005). The peri-urban regions first emerged in
developed areas such as the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and Yangtze
River Delta (YRD). There has been some research on these periurban
areas, for example, Webster and Muller’s research on the
peri-urban area in Ningbo-Hanzhou corridor of the YRD (2002) and
Zheng and Liu’s research on the peri-urban area in Dongguan city
of the