The desert oasis ecotone is a ecological zone influenced by desertification and oasisization, and is a major research focus for restoration ecology. Based on the fifth national desertification monitoring, our research used variance analysis and redundancy analysis to study the relationships between vegetation ecological characteristics and soil environmental factors at four different desertification developmental stages in the Minqin Desert Oasis Transition Zone. The results showed that (1) with the development of desertification, all the soil environmental factors, such as occupancy rate of wind erosion, topsoil gravel content, and saline-alkali spots, showed an increased dynamic trend, while the effective soil thickness showed a decreased dynamic trend. Among the vegetation factors, species richness, total vegetation coverage, shrub coverage, herb coverage, dominant species coverage, plant height, and abundance decreased significantly, whereas the ratio of dominant species coverage to total vegetation coverage increased gradually; (2) among the soil environmental factors, the effects of the effective soil layer thickness on vegetation ecological characteristics at the four stages of desertification were significant; the occupancy rate of wind erosion was the dominant driving factor behind the variation in the vegetation ecological characteristics at the mild, moderate, and severe stages, but other factors were not correlated with vegetation ecological characteristics for most desertification stages; and (3) compared to the mild, severe, and extremely severe desertification stages, the response of vegetation ecological characteristics to soil environmental factors was more sensitive at the moderate stage and it should be the focus for desertification control.