Abstract: Promoting the coordinated development of the Ecological-Economic-Society (EES) system is the core requirement of the development strategy of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. By constructing a EES system coordination evaluation index, and by using coordinated development, ESDA and panel data models, the spatial and temporal differentiation characteristics and driving mechanisms of the coordinated development of the EES system above the prefecture level in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2000 to 2016 were measured and analyzed. The results show that: (1) The coordinated development of EES system is on the rise and the regional differences are gradually narrowing, but the overall development level is low; the Moderately dysfunctional type occupies the main body of development type; the development pattern of “northeast high and southwest low” is formed in the space, and the high-coordination zone is located in the core cities such as the Yangtze River Delta and the provincial capital of the central and western regions.(2) The coordinated development of EES system is hierarchical, the coordination degree is a pyramid type distribution from high to low, showing “clustering” characteristics, the degree of urban coordination in urban agglomeration is higher overall; the regional difference characteristics of coordination degree are significant, the downstream is more developed than the middle and upper reaches, and the cities along the river are better than the non-river cities. (3) The coordinated development of EES system presents strong positive spatial autocorrelation, H-H type is concentrated in the hot spot area, and the L-L type is more distributed in the cold spot area.; The local area correlation and cold hot spot space pattern generally shows that the coastal area is superior to inland, the downstream is more developed than the middle and upper reaches.(4) The spatial and temporal pattern of coordinated development of the EES system are driven by various factors, including the development of EES subsystems, geographic location, strategy and policy, spatial proximity effect, and so on.