Historical evolution of marine functional zoning in China since its reform and opening up in 1978

Marine functional zoning (MFZ) serves as an extremely important marine spatial policy in China. This research elaborates on the historical evolution of the MFZ in China since the beginning of reform and opening-up policy when the marine spatial planning was firstly highly valued in China. Over time, the MFZ in China has evolved through four stages: the formation of the MFZ prototype (1978-1986), MFZ's official initiation (1987-1997), MFZ's legalization (1998-2003), MFZ's maturity and the optimization period (2004-up to now). The evolution process as well as its characteristics is analyzed and summarized accordingly. The results show that the spatial scope of the MFZ is expanding, the hierarchical system of MFZ is more standardized; the classification system of MFZ is more rationalized; and the objectives of MFZ are gradually quantified. However, problems and challenges, including lagging and inflexible plans, deficiency in public participation, insufficient marine environment protection, and vague zoning ownership, still exist and deserve attention during the evolution of MFZ. At the end, a development tendency analysis of the MFZ is conducted, which reveals that the formulation of MFZ will change from top down to bottom up; the vertical planning scope of MFZ will extend to deep sea and seabed; the classification of MFZ will transform from functional orientation to constraint orientation.