Gross primary productivity (GPP) is the fundament of all ecological services that ecosystems can provide, and its change will influence the sustainable development of regional socio-economic and ecological security. Based on the ecosystem process model CEVSA2, this study applied the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite remote sensing data to construct a new version of the remote sensing data-driven model, CEVSA-RS. The relative impacts of climate change and human activities on the spatial and temporal changes of terrestrial ecosystem gross primary productivity were analyzed based on CEVSA-RS, and the impacts of human activities were determined in terms of both the magnitude and trends of potential gross primary productivity (GPP_CL) driven by climate and actual gross primary productivity (GPP_RS) driven by climate and remote sensing. According to the national average, potential GPP (1016.36 gC m^-2a^-1) was slightly higher than actual GPP (962.85 gC m^-2a^-1) from 2000 to 2017. However, there is an obviously spatial disparity:the actual GPP is higher than the potential GPP in forested vegetation cover areas such as most of the south of the Yangtze River, the east of the Qinling and Taihang Mountains, and the east of the Daxinganling and Changbai Mountain areas. Meanwhile, the actual GPP is lower than the potential GPP in areas such as grassland and shrubland over western China. The GPP of whole Chinese terrestrial ecosystems showed a significant increasing trend (P<0.05), and the increasing speed of actual GPP (46.04 gC m^-210a^-1) exceeded that of potential GPP (41.46 gC m^-210a^-1), which meant human activities positively contributed to the most area in South China and North China Plain, while negatively impacted the ecosystems in eastern Inner Mongolia, northern Northeast Plains and western Tibetan Plateau. The areas where the impacts of human activities are greater than the impacts of climate chang accounted for 53% of the total land area in China. Considering negative impacts of human activities in the western China, as an area of fragile eco-environment, there is a long way to protect its ecosystems while to develop grassland-based husbandry through determining livestock stocking rate according forage production.