Abstract: A scientific division of China's cotton cultivated area is favourable to the country's cotton production in accordance with the principle of adopting suitable measures to local conditions, practicing reasonable allocation and guiding production according to various types.According to ecological and srio-economic conditions, basic characteristics of cotton production and current state of allocation, China's cotton cultivated area can be divided into five major cotton regions and twelve cotton subre-gions. They are: 1) the Huanghe Valley cotton region (including four subre-gions: North China plain, Huang-Huai plain, Fen-Wei-Luo Plain, and Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area); 2) the Yangtze Valley cotton region (including five subregions. the Lower Yangtze Valley, the Middle Yangtez Valley, the Upper Yangtze Valley, the Nanyang-Xiangyang basin, and the Southern Red Earth Hilly area); 3) the Northwestern In terior cotton region (including three subregions. south Xinjiang, East Xinjiang,and North Xinjiang-Hexi Corridor); 4) the early-maturing cotton region; and 5) South China cotton region.The North China Plain is a famous cotton area of our country, Possessing the optimum ecological conditions very suitable for the cotton cultivation with great potential in increasing production.South Xinjiang and the Huang Huai Plain are also cotton-production areas known for their optimum ecological conditions, but the current status of cotton development is handicapped by the Relatively low level of economic and technical conditions, yet they have great potentialities.The Lower and Middle Yangtze Valley Plain is a large high-yield cotton-cultivated area distrbuted intensively with cotton fields.It is suitable to cotton cullivation but with limited potential in development.The Fen-Wei-Luo Plain, North Xinjiang,and Nanyang-Xiangyang Basin are also main cotton production areas but they have less potential.The Upper Yangtze Valley, the Southern Red Earth Hilly Area, South China, and Northern Early-Maturing Cotton Regions are ecologically less suitable to cotton production; Cotton field there are small in acreage and distributed separately.From strategic point of view of allocation, the future development of China's cotton-producing areas should take into account the following measures, i.e.to consolidate and improve cotton concentrated areas of Lower and Middle Yangtze Valley Regions,to actively construct the cotton producing area of North China Plain, to develop gradually new cotton area of the Huang-Huai Plain, to create conditions to explore high-quality cotton area in South Xinjiang,to adjust and diminish cotton acreage of the regions where ecologically unfavorable to cotton cultivation and to concentrate properly the dispersedistributed cotton acreage, so as to establish a rational alloction system of cotton development.