The purpose of this paper is to explore the spatio-temporal characteristics of land use change in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (MRYR), by starting with the stage identification and transformation process division of regional economic-social development. The method of change range, change speed, and geo-information map were employed. The results indicated that: ①The eco-social development stage of the MRYR have undergone two transition processes during 2000-2018. The first is from the primary production stage II to the middle industrialization stage, with slow growth of urbanization and serious outflow of population . The second is from the middle industrialization stage to the late industrialization stage, with steady growth of urbanization and continuous return of population. ②In terms of overall characteristics, the cultivated land area continues to decrease, the water area and construction land area continue to increase, the woodland, grassland and wetland area obviously decrease, and the unused land area remains relatively stable. ③In terms of process characteristics, in 2000-2010, cultivated land and forest land were transformed into each other, cultivated land into construction land and water area, and water area into wetland were the main change types. In 2010-2018, cultivated land and construction land were transformed into each other, forest land into construction land and cultivated land, and wetland into water area were the main change types. In addition, the spatial separation degree of land use change in 2010-2018 was significantly greater than that in 2000-2010. ④ In terms of trajectory characteristics, the early change type is the main type, followed by the late change type and repeated change type, and the proportion of continuous change type is small. Therefore, the stage characteristics of land use change in the MRYR are obvious, which is manifested in the change of land use quantitative and spatial structure caused by the scale and direction of transformation between different land use types in different eco-social development transformation processes.