Human activities and global change have dramatically transformed land systems. Land use transition (LUT), which comprehensively reflect the shift in land use status as a coupled human-environmental system, have attracted more attention. We argue that LUT is driven by conflicts underlying land use structure and function. To support this, we accounted for land use conflicts (LUC) to characterize the trajectory of LUT in China. We quantified the transitions of land use structure and function in China from 1980 to 2020, and assessed the conflicts underlying land use patterns and functions for the same period. Then we examined the relationships between the patterns of LUT and LUC using Spearman correlation analysis and Wilcoxon test. The results show that the more diverse land use structure is attributed to the fragmentation of ecological land and the restoration of unused land, while urban and cropland expansion causes more homogeneous land use structure. The transition in land use function shows an overall increasing trend, and is characterized by the conversion from the dominance of ecological function to living and production functions. Such trends are pronounced in the southeast of Hu Huanyong Line, an important geographic division line of socio-economic context. The overall level of LUC in China is relatively weak, but shows an increasing trend during the last 40 years. We found a strong positive correlation between land use structure and its conflict, between land use function and its conflict, suggesting that conflict always promote LUT to achieve a diverse pattern and a high level of function. The strongly negative correlation between the conflict of land use structure and land use function implies that the intense conflict within land use pattern is not favorable for the improvement of function. The positive correlation between the conflict of land use functions and land use structure suggests that the unbalanced functions tend to lead to more diverse land use pattern. We conclude that LUT in general is mainly affected by conflict of land-use structure, but the conflict of land-use function contributes to LUT on land with a simple structure and low-level function. Our research reveals LUT in China from the perspective of land use conflict, which provides scientific support for manage conflict to achieve sustainable development of land resources.