Abstract:Based on the systematic review of the research progress on China's relative poverty, this study discussed the distribution characteristics of the relative poverty areas (RPAs), the basis of regional function types, and proposed the policy recommendations. There are three main periods concerning sustainable development research on RPAs: (1) The concept of “relative poverty” was adopted for the first time to carry out scientific research on regional sustainable development. (2) It supported the RPAs to become an important type of the area to promote sustainable development policies in underdeveloped areas in China. (3) It deployed a protracted battle in advance to support the development of RPAs before the comprehensive accomplishment of anti-poverty. The change characteristics of the RPAs and the regional function types indicated that the scale of the relative poverty population in China has remained at around 200 million for a long time, and the pattern of concentrated distribution has not changed. Meanwhile, taking ecological service function as the main regional function types, areas with and lack of development conditions coexist in the RPAs constrained by the natural carrying capacity. Policy recommendations are proposed to promote the simultaneous realization of modernization in the RPAs on a higher stage as follows. From a global perspective, the optimization regulation and spatial governance of the Man-Land system should be carried out to stabilize the national defense, ecological, food, energy, and social security. For regions with development potential, the comparative advantages of the resources and ecology should be transformed into economic advantages through mechanism innovation, thereby solving the intergenerational transfer under “path dependence” and the interregional exfoliation under the “Matthew effect”. For regions lack of development conditions, natural carrying capacity should be steadily unloaded, the mountain, forest, farmland, lake, and grassland should be conserved systematically, and the equalization level of basic public services should be improved comprehensively.