Establishment of the China National Park system aims to re-organise the diversified management systems of protected areas to realize efficient and proper terrestrial land planning, natural capital conservation, and public welfare. This study reviews the development of theories and techniques of the nature reserves and scenic areas and summarizes progress of national park pilots, and proposed the general rules of boundary delineation and zoning of national parks. National park planning should aim to achieve conservation goals, learn from nature reserve zoning and itemize management objectives for sub-zoning, and learn from scenic area planning to take a landscapce value into consideration and balance socio-economic conditions, especially land tenure. It then should consider climate change and regional development goals in the long term to finalize the theoretical system. In the formation of the theory, realizing different ecosystem service bundles could be the target of spatial control. Under certain land tenure systems, ecological protection and community livelihood development could be balanced by implementing conservation easements to separate land ownership, use rights, and benefit rights to restrain community land use in certain areas with compensation.