[Objective] This paper was aimed to deepen the cognition to the vector properties of land use change, to further extract the profundity information in the characteristics and the rule of land use change, and to enrich the land use change research methods, to provide relevant reference for the regulation of land resources.[Methods] On a perspective of land use transfer flow, two concepts termed land use transfer rate and the land use transfer chain were introduced. Data of MSS/TM/ETM remote sensing image were used to make a case study of land change process in Tongxin County in arid area of central Ningxia Hui Aotonomous Region.[Results] Cultivated land and grassland had increased in the study region, however, the area of unused land had reduced during 1978-2015. At countywide scale, land use transfer rate had decreased gradually in Tongxin County. With respect to the land use transfer of different lands, the transfer rate of cultivated land increased firstly and then decreased; land use transfer rate of grassland reduced firstly and then rose; and land use transfer rate of unused land experienced a variation of deduce-rise-deduce in Tongxin County. From 1978 to 1987, grasslands were mostly transformed to unused lands in Tongxin County. From 1987 to 1996, the land use transfer flow was diversified. Since 1996, grasslands were expanded in the processes of cultivated land transformation and the unused land was also amplified, for it was exploited attentively. From 1978 to 2015, the transformation of land use in Tongxin County was mainly referred to the loss and protection of arable land. Among the transformation types, one-way chain had two main types referring to 31(grass turn arable land) and 61(unused cultivated land); reciprocating chain called Ⅱ_a, mainly had the types of 161(cultivated land-unused-cultivated land) and 131(cultivated land-grassland-cultivated land).[Conclusion] There existed a great proportion of "reciprocating chain" of land use change in Tongxin County during 1978-2015. In the future, more attention should be paid to the connotation revealed by the called reciprocating chain of land use change, and relevant countermeasures should be taken in the development and management of land resources.