China’s Response to Ecosystem Sustainability Challenges: Dominant Problems and Strategic Orientations

China has implemented long-term and large-scale initiatives to address land and ecosystem sustainability challenges, yet their ecological outcomes and regional differentiation remain insufficiently synthesized within a unified ecological regionalization framework. This study integrates government policies and planning documents, official reports and news, academic publications, and spatial ecological datasets to assess China’s ecological protection and restoration practices and to identify major ecological problems and strategic orientations across 57 ecodistricts. A total of 472 documentary records were retained after screening, and spatial assessments of soil erosion sensitivity, sandification sensitivity, rocky-desertification sensitivity, and vegetation change were conducted using harmonized ecological regionalization units. Between 2005 and 2020, approximately 4.1% of the mapped area experienced ecosystem-type change, while vegetation exhibited an overall greening tendency. National monitoring also indicates continued reductions in soil and water loss, sandification, and rocky desertification. However, ecological pressures remain strongly differentiated among regions, and more than 80% of ecodistricts face three or more major ecological problems. Dominant strategic orientations also vary spatially: protection-oriented strategies are more common in relatively intact and less disturbed regions, restoration-oriented strategies are concentrated in areas with stronger degradation and human disturbance, and integrated protection–restoration strategies occur mainly where conservation and intensive land use coexist. These findings demonstrate that China has achieved substantial overall ecological improvement, but recovery remains spatially uneven and constrained by overlapping pressures. China’s experience suggests that long-term commitment, sustained investment, ecological regionalization, and differentiated interventions are important for ecosystem sustainability, while context-specific adaptation and explicit consideration of social–ecological trade-offs are essential for broader transferability.