Based on CG-LTDR datasets, the land cover change and distribution characteristics during 1990-2010 were analyzed in China using the GIS spatial statistical analysis and other mathematical statistics methods. Compared with the reference data of CLUD, CG-LTDR land cover data has a higher classification precision. The new datasets show that the land cover indicates obvious interannual evolutions due to the climate and human activities, especially in the semi-arid and semi-humid areas distributed along Inner Mongolia to Yunnan Province. The synthetic land cover data for 5 years were used to eliminate the interannual fluctuations and to increase accuracy. The results show that the land cover types in China had changed dramatically during 1990-2000 and indicated a relatively smooth pattern during 2000-2010, which is related to the application of national policy and economic development. Among the four major land cover types, the increase of woodland area was the most significant, which is mainly due to the land use transformation from farmland to woodland in the Southeast China, and grassland into woodland in the southwest and northeast part of China. But due to the deforestation and cropland expansion, the coverage of woodland was decreased in some of the Northeast and Northwest China regions. Farmland has the largest coverage in China, while its decreasing trend is mainly caused by its transformation toward woodland and grassland. The most significant decrease of farmland appeared in the south part of China, while a slight increase was revealed in some of the Northern China. The increase of woodland and decrease of farmland were related to the national policy of "returning farmland to forest" and relevant ecological environment constructions. Grassland was mainly distributed in the ecological fragile region, and was prone to convert into other land cover types. Moreover, grassland decreased most evidently around China, because of the changes among different land cover types. To be specific, grassland was turned into woodland in Southwest China. And, grassland and farmland was interactively converted into each other along the conjunction areas from the middle east of Inner Mongolia to the north of Shaanxi Province. Additionally, grassland and bareland was converted interactively along the regions from the northern of Inner Mongolia to Tibetan Plateau. The bareland was mainly located in the Northwest China, while showing an increasing trend due to the degradation of grassland.