Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the spatial distribution, temporal change and policy proposal of the cultivated land pressure in China. Considering the relationship between the quantity of cultivated land and population, the model of cultivated land pressure index put forward by Professor Cai Yunlong, can quantitatively measure the tension of cultivated land resources in a region. But the difference of cultivated land quality and utilization in different regions was not considered in this model. Therefore, this paper adopted the quality coefficient to expand the cultivated land pressure index, which can reflect both the quantity and quality of cultivated land. Moreover, most of the existing relating studies focused on shorter time series or smaller research fields, few studies have been conducted with long time series data like the years of 1978-2015 in this paper, and little research about spatial-temporal change of cultivated land pressure has been done at different scales across the whole China. So, this paper used the modified model to calculate the cultivated land pressure index at different levels i.e. the whole country, 4 major economic regions and 31 provincial administrative regions from 1978 to 2015. And based on the above-mentioned research data, by using the methods of comparative analysis, clustering analysis and barycenter analysis, this paper analyzed the temporal changes and spatial distribution differences of cultivated land pressure index at the 3 spatial scales and put forward some proposals for cultivated land protection. The study showed that: 1) The changing trend of the cultivated land pressure index in China can be approximately divided into 4 stages: fluctuant declining period from 1978 to 1984, relatively stable period from 1985 to 1997, rapidly rising period from 1998 to 2003 and rapidly declining period from 2004 to 2015. 2) The regional difference of cultivated land pressure is very obvious. In more detail, the cultivated land pressure in the eastern region of China increases gradually, and in the western region of China, the cultivated land pressure is always high, while it is basically stable at a safe state in the middle and northeastern regions of China. 3) The barycenter of cultivated land pressure in China gradually moves to the southeast over time. 4) Thirty-one provincial administrative regions can be divided into 4 types by using the hierarchical clustering method, namely high-pressure type, medium-pressure type, low-pressure type and non-pressure type. 5) Finally, aiming at different types or degrees of cultivated land pressure, suitable countermeasures should be taken to alleviate the cultivated land pressure effectively so as to guarantee the grain supply in all regions of China, such as purchasing the indicators of cultivated land compensation in other provinces or controlling the population inflow moderately for economically developed provinces of high pressure, carrying out land consolidation and rehabilitation actively or increasing agricultural investment for ecologically fragile provinces of high or medium pressure, improving farmland infrastructure or transporting grain to the food shortage areas or offering the indicators of cultivated land compensation to other provinces with insufficient cultivated land reserve resources for low-pressure or non-pressure provinces located in major grain producing areas, and so on.