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This research investigates regional variations of forestland changes in China's coastal areas and potential drivers during 1996–2015. GIS-based spatial analyses including Local Moran's I and GWR are employed in this study. The overall forestland has increased before 2009 but declined since then. The forestland changes have varied over both space and time, which can be seen as a response to the fast urbanization and government policies in recent years. Factors such as arable-land changes and forestland at the beginning of a period were found significantly associated with the forestland changes. Coastal forests play a critical role in the defence of natural disasters like typhoons and tsunamis. The deforestation and forest degradation due to rapid urbanization has presented great challenges (e.g. debris flows and floods) to China's coastal areas. Using a unique national land-use survey dataset and geographical information system (GIS)-based spatial analytics, including local Moran's I and geographically weighted regression (GWR), this paper investigates the regional variations and associated driving forces of forestland changes in China's coastal areas across three periods: 1996−2000, 2000–2008 and 2009–2015. The results suggest that the forestland has generally increased until 2008 and has decreased since 2009. Particularly, some counties in the south coast have higher degree of forestland loss during 1996–2008 and the growth of forestland after 2009 was only found in a few counties in the north and east coast. Also, the results indicate that the initial proportion of forestland in each period and the changes of arable-land have significant positive associations with the forestland changes across all the three periods, where the former mainly affects the northern coast while the latter has a primary influence in the southern coast. The findings suggest that government policies for increasing forestland such as the "Grain for Green" project were highly effective in China's coastal areas before 2008 but have shown less impact ever since. This research provides insights into the dynamics of forestland in China's coastal areas and can assist with future decision-making regarding forest resources protection and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]