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Abstract Land survey is the basis and prerequisite for effective land management, and also the starting point and cornerstone of land administration. Since land taxation has been the main source of state revenue, land survey is highly valued by the government of each period. The purpose of the land survey was not to get accurate land data, but to provide basis for levying taxes. Since modern times, besides its fiscal and economic significance, Chinese land administration has become significant in the transformation of modern national construction and grass-roots social governance. Land survey has also entered a new stage of transformation from the traditional to the modern. However, the overall achievement of land survey in the early 1900s was limited, so it has not received sufficient attention from the academy for a long time. This paper takes Zhejiang province as the research object and selects Lanxi, Pinghu, and Wenling for analysis and comparison. Based on local documents such as modern archives, chronicles, and investigation reports, this article analyzes the background, organization, method, technology and capital of the land survey in Zhejiang from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, and tries to explain the land survey in the transformation significance of the modern state construction and the grass-roots social governance. The land survey in Zhejiang province has a long history. From the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the method and system of land survey had been constantly improved. Nevertheless, grass-roots land survey was always dependent on tax agents, gentry and other groups, resulting in the phenomenon of hidden fields, evading taxes and cadastral misconduct. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, due to the impact of Taiping Rebellion on the man-land relationship, the scale of fish scales was rebuilt in parts of Zhejiang, but the problem of cadastral confusion was not fundamentally solved. After the foundation of the Republic of China, the land survey was carried out in Zhejiang by combining the "temporary solution" (land report) and the "radical measure" (land survey). Trapped in frequent wars and financial shortages, the land survey, which was costly to implement, progressed slowly. Accordingly, the land report with better maneuverability was usually preferred by the national government. In 1930s, the Lanxi county government experiment county and the Pinghu land administration experiment county appeared in Zhejiang, whose land survey results were remarkable with different characteristic in the survey methods. In addition, in view of the existing achievements, the results of land survey in Wenling county during wartime were also outstanding. Based on the historical investigation of the modern land survey process in Zhejiang and the typical analysis of the above-mentioned three counties, this paper draws the conclusion as follows. On the institutional level, the modern transformation of land survey was manifested in the establishment of land management departments from the central to the local governments and the formulation of various laws and regulations. Then, the organization and standard of land survey tended to be unified in China, and governments gradually assumed the actual responsibilities of private land management. On the technical level, there is the essential difference between the modern land survey and the traditional one: the latter involves a strong empiricism, while the former means the development from experience to science. Not only the application of new technology and new instrument in land survey but also the introduction, cultivation, and enrichment of the professional talents of land administration greatly improved the professional level and accuracy of land survey. Therefore, despite the limited effect, the land survey of the Republic of China had far-reaching impact. Especially the result of land survey is closest to the real land number. Until the early stage of People's Republic of China, cadastral atlases of Wenling and other counties still played an important role as a scientific land data and the basis of property rights.
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