: It is of great significance to explore the spatial and temporal evolution of rural green development level and its diffusion and convergence effects to realize agricultural and rural green development and help rural revitalization strategy. This study constructed an evaluation system for rural green development, and used global principal component analysis (PCA) to measure the value of rural green development in 30 provincial-level administrative regions of China from 2006 to 2017. Visual mapping and descriptive statistical analysis were used to describe the temporal characteristics, spatial patterns and regional differences of rural green development level values, and then spatial autocorrelation and spatial convergence models were used to analyze the spatial diffusion and spatial convergence effects of rural green development. The results show that: 1) During the study period, the overall green development level of rural areas in China showed an accelerating trend, with an average annual growth rate of 14.53%, showing a spatial pattern of "higher in the east and lower in the west, and middle in the middle", and a temporal character of transformation from "low level and low gap" to "high level and high gap". 2) The spatial diffusion effect of rural green development level was significantly positive during the study period. The number of "high-high" and "low-low" clusters is more than that of "high-low" and "low-high" clusters. The "high-high" cluster is mostly distributed in the southeast coastal area, while the "low-low" cluster is mostly concentrated in the central area. 3) The convergence effect of rural green development occurs in the whole country and other regions except the central region. The spatial absolute β convergence coefficient showed the characteristics of eastern (β=-0.127) > western (β=-0.080) > central (β=-0.016), and the convergence rate showed the characteristics of eastern (1.23%) > western (0.76%) > central (0.15%). Under the joint influence of urbanization rate, per capita GDP, proportion of science and technology expenditure, and rural social retail, rural green development converges to its own steady level. There are significant differences in the direction and degree of each factor in the whole country and each region. The research results have guiding significance for deepening the research of rural green development, and can also provide decision support for narrowing the gap in rural development.