Human being survival and development base on the quantitative a ra ble land.Land use and land cover change (LUCC)has become one of the eight c ore fields among the global environmental change,which was affected by both nat ural factor and the socio-economic factor.With rapid economic development and heavy population press ure,China will lose a lot of arable land in the future.The research into the a rable land change and its driving force has been discussed in recently published papers.But the arable land change and its driving force in the intensive agri cultural region has not been reported.It is helpful to safeguard the food secu rity by analysing the arable land change and its driving forces.Quzhou county i s an intensive agricultural region in China,so it has been identified as the op timal study area for this purpose.Arable land change and socio-economic data were obtained from1949to1999from the county statistics bureau and land resource bureau,hence data of the arable land change of this p eriod was taken into account in the present study.The analysis presented in t his paper shows that the change of arable land experienced such phases as incre ase,dramatic decrease,slow decrease,rapid increase and relative stagnancy.Th e annual increase rate is0.43%from1949to1957,the annual decrease r ate is1.55%and0.47%respectively from1957to1961and from1961 to1974,the annual increase rate is0.63%from1974to1985and the a nnual decrease rate is0.02%from1985to1999.The arable land change w as driven by such factors as population change,climate change,technique change ,regional economic and policy change.The factors meationed above form a non li near and multi-feedback way system which drives the arable land change all the way through .Among which,the increase of population requires much more arable land immedia tely;the climate change is the basis for ameliorating saline-alkali land into arable land,but only with technical progress,can the saline be transformed in to arable land,the stable economic structure leads to the stablility of arable land which loses the chance to be converted into built-up land,at the same ti me,the government enacts relevant policies to change the quantity of arable l and responsive to land use.