Abstract: Abstract: Cultivated land is the key resource and environment factor affecting human survival and development. With the progress of industrialization and urbanization in China, cultivated land resource is facing great challenges: cultivated land degradation, ecological environment pollution, lacking of cultivated land reserve, etc. Meanwhile, the growth rate of cultivated land resource investment is greater than the output, and the overall efficiency is relatively low. Especially, in the background of new urbanization, enhancing cultivated land's regional use efficiency is of great importance for the supplement of agricultural products and the rise of farmers' income, and it has significant theoretical and practical values. Taking 31 provinces in China as the research object, the paper built up the evaluation system of cultivated land's provincial use efficiency, and discussed the differentiation and mechanism of spatial-temporal pattern of cultivated land's provincial use efficiency from 1994 to 2012, using improved DEA (data envelopment analysis) method, ESDA (exploratory spatial data analysis), R/S (rescaled range) analysis method and Tobit regression model. The results showed that: DEA optimal ratio of cultivated land's provincial use efficiency was relatively small, and spatial characteristics showed a distribution pattern of the East high and the Mid-west low; the comprehensive efficiency was higher in the eastern coastal, northern coastal and northeastern areas, where a rising trend was presented; technical efficiency change was similar to the comprehensive efficiency, and scale efficiency showed a trend of first upward and then downward; cultivated land's provincial use efficiency had a positive autocorrelation characteristics, and there existed a spatial cluster feature; on the local, efficiency of provincial cultivated land use could be divided into four types: H-H (high-high) efficiency areas, H-L (high-low) efficiency areas, L-H (low-high) efficiency areas and L-L (low-low) efficiency areas; partial H-H efficiency areas were mainly located in the Beijing-Tianjin area and the Yangtze River Delta, and extended to the Pearl River Delta; L-L efficiency areas formed a stable "L"-shaped pattern which were mainly concentrated in the western China; efficiency of cultivated land use had obvious fractal characteristics and showed a growing trend that the areas with significant growth were located in the eastern coast and northern coast. Economic development and agricultural technology advancement were important factors that influenced the spatial differentiation of cultivated land's provincial use efficiency, and natural condition was the basis factor; farmer's characteristics have a certain impact on the efficiency of spatial-temporal differentiation. Lastly, this paper put forward some suggestions for improving cultivated land's provincial use efficiency to promote the sustainable utilization of cultivated land resource in China: 1) Strengthen the agricultural science and technology, cultivate talents with agricultural technology, improve farmers' farming skills, and constantly promote new technologies; 2) Increase the intensity of cultivated land consolidation, guide the redrawing and circulation of cultivated land, and promote scale operation and comprehensive production capacity of cultivated land; 3) Adjust regional agricultural industrial structure, change the traditional way of extensive use, and promote agricultural modernization development; 4) Build "high efficiency, high compensation" operation mechanism, encourage reasonable utilization of cultivated land resource in different regions, and gradually implement cultivated land use policy from "quantitative" to "efficient". Meanwhile, it should be pointed out that this paper also has somewhat limitations. This paper only chose the experimental data from 1994 to 2012, so the time scale was narrow, and evolution differentiation characteristics of cultivated land's use efficiency was ignored in a longer time scale. Based on two basic dimensions of the input and output, the measured results of cultivated land's use efficiency were objective, but the microscopic index of science and technology investment such as improved crop varieties and field management techniques was also needed to be considered. In addition, the output should focus more on environmental bearing capacity of cultivated land resource. On mechanism analysis, the factors of policy system and farmer willingness to which the cultivated land's regional use efficiency had a positive response were not deeply discussed. Next, based on system (macro) and farmers (micro) perspectives, studying the mechanism of spatial-temporal pattern differentiation of cultivated land's regional use efficiency would be the domain and direction for the deep research.