Abstract: Based on rural environmental data of 31 provincial administrative regions in China, this paper constructed a rural environmental quality evaluation system by the ESDA-GIS model to assess the temporal and spatial differences of rural environmental quality in China and analyzed its relationship with the development of rural economy by the threshold regression model. Results show that: from the temporal perspective, the comprehensive index of China’s rural environmental quality increased from 51.01 in 2004 to 52.89 in 2013, showing some improvement, especially the developed regions in southern and eastern regions. From the spatial perspective, China’s rural environmental quality has spatial agglomeration. The rural environmental quality in north China is better than that in south China and the rural environmental quality is getting better from east to west. Furthermore, the environment quality in rural China has the relationship with the development of rural economy. The analysis of the dual influences of agricultural development on rural environmental quality indicated that agricultural development has some positive influences on rural environmental quality during first stage and then changed to negative influences in next stage. The level of industrial development is negatively correlated to the rural economy, but the negative effect is reduced after crossing the threshold value. Farmers’ income also has negative impacts on the rural environmental quality before the threshold value but it has significant positive influences on rural environmental quality after crossing the threshold value. Furtherly, industrial development and farmers’ income, and the development of the rural economy have significant effects on improving the rural environmental quality. Therefore, to improve the rural environmental quality completely and realize the goals of efficient and green production environment, clean and comfortable living environment, and beautiful and sustainable ecological environment, additional resources and great efforts should be directed to the development of rural economy and the improvement of the rural environmental quality in southern and eastern regions.