Abstract: Over the past four decades, China’s development zones (DZs) have served not only as vital engines for rapid industrialization and urbanization but also as critical policy spaces for facilitating global capital circulation, promoting regional coordination, and fostering institutional innovation. While the transformation of these zones exhibits complex spatial production characteristics, existing research often relies on Western theoretical models, leaving the unique mechanisms of China’s DZs under-explored. By tracing the origins of spatial production theory and the three circuits of capital, this study examines the characteristics, key influencing factors, and evolutionary patterns of China’s DZs. The findings reveal that, across different developmental stages, spatial production in DZs is characterized by government-led power embedding, capital circulation, and spatial restructuring. This process is primarily influenced by three factors: actors in spatial practices, capital circulation motives, and regional interaction modes. Building on these insights, the study proposes a "stage-based, process-oriented" evolutionary pattern, which explains the phenomenon of prioritizing production over consumption during the transformation of DZs and clarifies the evolving roles of the government—as participant, manager, and service provider—at various stages. This research provides a theoretical foundation for understanding state-led spatial production in DZs and offers insights into spatial governance and transformation in the new era.