Multifunctional rural development provides a powerful entrée into understanding sustainable rural transformation development against the context of rapid socio-economic growth with cascading effects on human-land relations. This paper attempts to summarize the stage characteristics of the multifunctional rural development and categorize China's rural areas by using both multi-factor comprehensive evaluation method and spatial analysis. Rural areas in China were encapsulated as four functional types-agricultural production function, economic development function, social security function, and ecological conservation function, and it was divided into 4 categories and 16 subcategories. The results indicated that the rural multifunctionality index presents obvious spatial heterogeneity during 2000–2015. Both the agricultural production function and social security function have shown an obvious increase, while the economic development function has much room for improvement. Recognizing the interaction between multiple functions is of great significance for implementation of strong multifunctionality pathways. The evolution of multifunctional rural is driven by both policy-oriented and market-induced forces. The results provide evidence for the cognition that multifunctionality is spatially complex, and contribute to the geography of multifunctionality. •Multifunctional rural development (MRD) is of paramount significance for rural sustainability.•Conceptual framework and assessment basis of MRD are established.•Spatio-temporal differentiation and regional types of MRD in China are probed.•Policy-oriented and market-induced mechanisms driving MRD are analyzed.•It has potential to enrich the geography of multifunctionality.