Scientific interpretation of the mechanism of land use change is important for government planning and management activities. This study analyzes the land use change in Jiangsu Province using three land use maps of 2000, 2005 and 2008. The study results show that there was a significant change in land use. The change was mainly characterized by a continuous built-up land expansion primarily at the expense of cropland loss, and the trend became increasingly rapid. There was an obvious regional difference, as most of the cropland loss or built-up land expansion took place in southern Jiangsu, where the rate of built-up land expansion was faster than in central and northern Jiangsu. Meanwhile, the spatial pattern changed remarkably; in general, the number of patches (NumP) showed a declining trend, and the mean patch size (MPS) and patch size standard deviation (PSSD) displayed increase trends. Furthermore, the relative importance of selected driven factors was identified by principal component analysis (PCA) and general linear model (GLM). The results showed that not only the relative importance of a specific driving factor may vary, but the driven factors may as well. The most important driven factor changed from urban population (UP), secondary gross domestic product (SGDP) and gross domestic product (GDP) during 2000-2005 to resident population (RP), population density (POD) and UP during 2005-2008, and the deviance explained (DE) decreased from 91.60% to 81.04%. Policies also had significant impacts on land use change, which can be divided into direct and indirect impacts. Development policies usually had indirect impacts, particularly economic development policies, which promote the economic development to cause land use change, while land management policies had direct impacts. We suggest that the government should think comprehensively and cautiously when proposing a new development strategy or plan.