Quantifying land transfer in China: Integrating its impacts on urban economy

In China's hierarchical land-governance system, the central government establishes the regulatory framework, while provincial and municipal authorities adapt the implementation according to local fiscal capacity, development priorities, and spatial constraints. Despite the importance of land transfer in shaping urban economic development processes, empirical research has long relied on fragmented samples or single-scale observations, and a unified long-term dataset spanning multiple administrative levels remains unavailable. To address this gap, this study constructs a multi-level spatiotemporal dataset of land transfer in China covering the period 2000-2024 at the national, provincial, and city levels. The dataset integrates seven standardized indicators, including land supply area, transaction price, gross floor area (GFA), payment amount, floor area ratio (FAR), building density, and greenery rate. Data are compiled from official land-market disclosure platforms and verified administrative transaction records and undergo systematic quality-control procedures, including cross-source reconciliation, unit harmonization, coverage diagnostics, and outlier screening to ensure temporal consistency and spatial comparability. The resulting database supports analyses of long-term land transfer dynamics, regional heterogeneity, and multi-level governance patterns. In addition, an illustrative empirical application demonstrates the analytical utility of the dataset for examining associations between land allocation and urban economic development indicators. This dataset provides a comprehensive empirical foundation for future research on land governance, land finance, urban spatial development, and regional transformation in China.