Climate change and human activities have intensified in recent years, causing complex changes to vegetation cover in coastal areas. Using SPOT-VGT Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from 1999 to 2020, this paper reveals the multi-temporal and spatial scale changes of vegetation cover in China's coastal areas, focusing on pattern-process, historical development trend, future persistence characteristics, and seasonal succession. The results show that: (1) the area proportion of high or dense vegetation cover is high, which is widely distributed in coastal areas. The area proportion of moderate vegetation cover is relatively low, which is represented by "ring urban agglomerations" and "adjacent agricultural and pastoral interlacing (or transitional) belts". The area proportion of non- or low vegetation cover is low, especially the coastal areas around the Bohai Sea-Yellow River Delta-Laizhou Bay. (2) Vegetation cover exhibits fluctuating but generally slowly increasing interannual variability, with high consistency and strong regularity of maximum and minimum values. Annual change takes the shape of a "∩" -shaped curve, with a clear peak (August) and trough (February), and an obvious cyclical feature of alternating growth and non-growth seasons. (3) Vegetation cover change mainly increases over the year, month, and season time scales. Among them, the regions where the change is seen as historical increase, future increase, and overall increase that will continue to increase are widely distributed, especially in northeast Liaoning Province, the northern mountainous areas of Hebei Province, the Fujian and Zhejiang mountainous areas, central and eastern Taiwan, the Guangdong and Guangxi mountainous areas, and central Hainan Province. (4) There are relatively few areas where vegetation cover change has decreased over the year, month, and season time scales. Among them, the regions where the change is seen as historical decrease, future decrease, and overall decrease that will continue to decrease are less distributed. All exhibit a local aggregation pattern of "ring urban agglomerations" and "adjacent agricultural and pastoral interlacing (or transitional) belts", which is most prominent in southeast Hebei Province, the Shandong Peninsula, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration. The research is expected to provide a scientific basis and theoretical support for coastal vegetation protection, ecological improvements, and climate change adaptation.