Abstract There is an increasing concern about spatial equality of development as a social issue in China. Controversial arguments exist about the seriousness of the issue, mainly because of the difference among measuring methods adopted by different researchers. As a matter of fact, “a simple and intuitively satisfactory measure of equality” still remains an issue of speculation. In this study, the author took a spatial visulization approach instead of a numeric indicator to describe the spatial inequality of development in China. A statistic in geostatistics, spatial mean, was used as a means of spatial equality measurement. Values of the spatial mean for population, GDP and consumption level were plotted on the country map with the help from a Geographic Information System (GIS) of provincial level data of China. Location of the spatial mean for population was adopted as a reference point. If the spatial mean of the data (GDP and consumption level) is significantly different from the reference point, it indicates the spatial inequality of development. Distance of the deviation indicates the magnitude of inequality, while the direction of the deviation indicates the high density part of the country in terms of the concerned economic indicator. Results of the case study were compared to that of the work conducted by the Development Research Center of State Council of China, which adopted a modified version of standard deviation by employing Pearson’s coefficient of variation. Conclusions of the two studies are quite close to each other, while the visulization approach provides more information like the spatial form of the development inequality.