County-level spatial planning not only needs to refine and implement the strategic deployment of the upper-level territorial spatial planning, but also clarify the specific arrangements for the development, utilization, protection and restoration of the territorial space at its own level, which leads to conflicts prone to occur. A comprehensive understanding of various conflicts in county-level territorial spatial planning is the key to solving the current difficulties in county-level overall planning. To this end, firstly, a conflict analysis framework for county-level spatial planning is constructed to identify conflict processes, to divide conflict types, and to analyze conflict characteristics from dimensions of stakeholders, planning goals, conflict issues and relationships. Then a case study from two typical counties is carried out and some relevant suggestions are put forward. It is found that county-level spatial planning involves multiple stakeholders and objectives. Conflict issues are mainly on allocation and transfer of spatial development rights and cultivated land protection tasks, which results in the difficult trade-off of food security and regional development for both the city- and county-level governments, as well as the dilemma for city-level government to coordinate the development rights and protection tasks of developing and developed counties. In addition, enterprises and farmers are unable to reach a consensus with the county-level government on the evacuation of inefficient land and the improvement of rural settlements, respectively. The results indicate that counties with different-level development face different conflicts and the coordination mechanism in county-level spatial planning is also imperfect. It is suggested to attach importance to the reasonable expression of all parties' interests, to pay attention to the feasible alternatives to conflict goals, to seek the active compromise of stakeholders, and to emphasize the effective intervention of higher-level third parties.

County-level territorial spatial planning; conflict types; conflict issues; stakeholders; planning goals