Ecosystem services research in China: A critical review

•A systematic search in both domestic and Web of Science database was conducted.•The origin of ES research in China was identified.•The publication trends in international peer-review journal were shown.•A database of Chinese ES studies was established.•Six categories of research focus were identified.•Three major challenges and corresponding future directions were discussed.

Research on ecosystem services (ES) in China has become one of the fastest growing areas in the last decades. A systematic literature review with the establishment of a national ES research database was conducted in this paper. The analysis of the database including 175 studies published in international peer-reviewed journals identified six categories of research focus, among which monetary valuation attracted the most attention. Two approaches in the monetary valuation studies are dominant, unit value based approach and primary data based approach. Challenges of Chinese ES research consist in the lack of internationally accepted frameworks, which leads to the confusing use of terminology for ecosystem type and ES class. Critics also exist in the significance of monetary valuation, because most of the case studies in China were based on the unit value transfer method. In addition, Chinese scholars seem to be unaware of the progress of cultural ecosystem services research and few studies with particular focus on CES are found. This paper concludes with the anticipation of a TEEB country study for China.