Coastal reclamation plays an important role in the mitigation of land-use pressure in the coastal zone brought by population growth and urbanization. Mainland China has been experiencing a massive transfer of tidal flats into land to satisfy the land-use needs of the developing society, which has caused significant changes to the coastal environment since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Heavy construction, such as coastal reclamation, has always been considered in the Five-Year Plan, which is an essential part of China's planned economy. Hence, Landsat series imagery was adopted to evaluate the temporal and spatial distributions of China's coastal reclamation from 1985 to 2010.During this period, 755183 hm² of coastal wetland was reclaimed for different uses, at an annual rate of 30207 hm² and the intensity of coastal reclamation of 1.7 hm² a^-1 km^-1. A majority of reclamation, accounting for 85.7% of total reclamation area in China's coastal zone, was concentrated in the Bohai Bay Economic Circle and Yangtze River Delta Economic Circle. Additionally, the intensity of coastal reclamation decreased initially, and then increased from 1985 to 2010. To understand the primary factor that has the greatest impact on China's coastal reclamation, the coastal zone was divided into four sections by geographic and economic conditions in the coastal zone, including Bohai Bay Economic circle, Yangtze River Delta Economic Circle, Pearl River Delta Economic circle, and other coastal zones. The analysis of combined physical geographical and economic pattern of China's coastal zone showed that: (1) Physical geographical conditions affect the spatial distribution and intensity of reclamation. Natural shorelines in China are separated into two sections by the Hangzhou Bay in the Zhejiang Province. Because of the low cost of reclamation of mud flats, intensive reclamation was concentrated in the northern section of the shoreline in China to satisfy the needs of agriculture and aquaculture, the both having low repay. Much higher percentage of coastal reclamation in the southern section of China's shoreline was for industry and construction of ports because of the widely distributed sandy shorelines that impose high cost of reclamation. (2) Social economic status greatly affects the temporal distribution and use pattern of reclamation. China's coastal zone experienced three stages of land reclamation from 1985 to 2010, including the coastal aqua-cultural reclamation in the 1980s, a hibernated period in coastal reclamation in the 1990s, and urbanized coastal reclamation after 2000, all of which were affected by the social and economic needs at the time. Especially, social and economic status during the second and third stage in reclamation had great impact on the onset of the third period. Cities such as Shanghai that have faster economic growth rate and higher urbanization rate entered the third period earlier and vice versa. Furthermore, considering the complexity of China's coastal zone, future research will address the change in land-use and land-cover in coastal zone in order to assist in coastal decision-making and management.