In order to study the main driving force of reclamation dynamics and land use change in coastal areas, this study selected the coastal areas of Jiangsu province as the research area. Based on the ENVI 5. 3 and ArcGIS 10. 0 software, as well as the data of Landsat-7 ETM remote sensing image in 2000 and Landsat-8 OLI remote sensing image in 2017, the shoreline was extracted by the visual interpretation and classified by the supervised classification method, to obtain the land use information in 2000 and 2017. The driving forces were obtained by the principal component analysis based on the SPSS 20. 0 software. The results showed that during the period from 2000 to 2017, the coastal areas of Jiangsu province were reclaimed on a large scale. The coastal land with area of 107 420. 0 hm² was reclaimed for different uses, at an annual rate of 6 318. 8 hm² and the intensity of coastal reclamation of 7. 11 hm²/(a·km). In the past 16 years, the coastal area of Lianyungang had the lowest reclamation intensity, and most of the farmland, woodland and water were converted into the urban and rural areas, industrial mining and residential land. Besides, the coastline of Yancheng coastal area was longest and the reclamation area was largest, the whole land utilization pattern moved towards the coast, and the area of farmland and unutilized land reduced. In the coastal area of Nantong, the reclamation intensity was largest, the woodland area was decreased by a large margin, and the urban area was increased. Population growth and social and economic development are the main driving forces of coastal reclamation and land use change in coastal areas of Jiangsu province.