Sustainable development is the only way to solve the current difficult economic, environmental and social problems. This paper uses the sustainable development index to measure the capacity for sustainable development of China’s provinces. From 1998 to 2008, the survival, development, social and intelligence support system indices show a rising trend. But the environmental support system index decreases slightly. On this basis, we construct a space panel model to identify spillover effect of China’s provincial sustainable development. The result shows that the survival, development, environmental and social support system indices have a significant positive spillover effect, while the intelligence support system index shows a negative spillover effect. The positive spillover effect means that provinces at the similar level of performance gather together in space, and they have imitated each other in sustainable development initiatives. The negative spillover effect shows an opposite picture. These phenomena are closely linked with the level of development in different regions and with the current mechanism for assessing the performance of government officials.