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Uneven land reform and entangled land-use regulations are extensively regarded as the key to urban sprawl in large cities in China. Although the significance of land issues has been substantially recognized, conflicts regarding land finance seem to be a generally under-evaluated factor in explaining the phenomenon of urban sprawl. This study conducted an extensive literature research and proposed a conceptual framework to demonstrate the effects of land financial incentives on urban sprawl in China. Urban sprawl in China manifests in multiple forms, such as leapfrogged industrial parks, low-density residential communities that are discontinuous from existing urban centers, and chaotic peri-urban informal development. These forms of urban sprawl may be closely associated with failures in government and market forces under the land financial incentives. We used this framework to analyze the experiences …