Stocking rate is one of the most important indicators to measure the productivity of grassland. Study on the grazing tolerance and spatial distribution characteristics of Artemisia frigida population under different stocking rates in desert steppe has significant effects for the restoration of the degraded grassland. The experiment design selected Artemisia frigida, a dominant species in Stipa breviflora desert steppe as the research object, which conducted with four different stocking rates (CK, 0 sheep unit hm^-2; LG, 0.93 sheep unit hm^-2; MG, 1.82 sheep unit hm^-2; and HG, 2.71 sheep unit hm^-2), and the representative sample plot (40 m×40 m) with the same terrain in each treatment was selected. The plant population density of Artemisia frigida is recorded by mechanical sampling method. Then, the descriptive statistics and variance analysis were performed by SAS9.4 software, and the spatial heterogeneity was analyzed using statistical software GS+9.0. The results showed that the density, frequency of occurrence, and the variation of mean value of Artemisia frigida decreased significantly with the increase of stocking rate. The spatial distribution decisive factor of plant population changed from structural factor to random factor with the increase of stocking rate. The fractal dimension value D₀ was ranked from large to small under different stocking rates is CK>HG>MG>LG, under different grazing conditions, the values of fractal dimension were between 1.700 and 2.000, indicating that the spatial distribution of these four regions with different stocking rates was relatively uniform. The spatial auto-correlative distances in LG and HG treatments were relatively larger than other treatments, which caused by different impact factors, LG area was significantly affected by random factors, and HG area was significantly affected by structural factors. With the increase of stocking rate, the spatial correlation of Artemisia frigida gradually weakened. Artemisia frigida has different spatial states in different stocking rates, the spatial distribution of Artemisia frigida were patchy in CK and HG treatments, while it was characterized by banded distribution in LG treatment, and it formed a large strip and scattered patches in MG treatment, the density distributions of LG and MG were similar, but the uniformity of MG is greater than LG treatment. Based on the research results above mentioned, we can conclude that the population density of Artemisia frigida decreased and the spatial distribution tended to be simplified, resulted in the decrease of productivity of Artemisia frigida with the increase of stocking rate, which affected the sustainable utilization of grassland in the desert steppe.