At present, China’s economy is transforming from a stage of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development, and the traditional productive forces and development model have revealed their limitations in the context of the new era. The rise and development of new quality productive forces have undoubtedly become the key to cracking the current development bottleneck. However, research on new quality productive forces is still in the exploratory stage, and methods for measuring the development level of new quality productive forces are not yet fully developed. This paper conducts an in-depth analysis of the development status, spatial distribution characteristics, and evolutionary trajectory of China’s new quality productive forces from 2012 to 2022, based on data from the China Statistical Yearbook, China High-tech Industry Statistical Yearbook, and the Data Pipman database, drawing on the research of Han Wenlong et al. (2024). The study finds that: (1) There is a significant difference in the development level of new quality productive forces between the eastern and central-western regions. (2) Regional disparities in new quality productive forces are primarily attributed to differences between provinces, and in the contribution rate of differences, the contribution rate of inter-group differences far exceeds that of other factors. (3) The shift in the center of gravity of spatial distribution indicates that despite the rapid development of new quality productive forces in the central and western regions, the eastern region still occupies a leading position. (4) The results of Markov chain analysis show that the development of new productivity in China has obvious spatial spillover effects and the phenomenon of “club convergence”. Based on the results of the study, this paper puts forward suggestions for accelerating the development of new quality productive forces and narrowing the inter-regional differences from the perspectives of increasing the support for scientific and technological innovation activities and promoting the balanced distribution of educational resources. Compared with the existing literature, the marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. Firstly, it tries to go beyond the traditional framework of workers, labor means, and labor objects. It constructs a comprehensive quantitative index system of new quality productive forces from three new dimensions: productivity advancement, development potential, and realization level. Secondly, the coupling coordination degree method is introduced, aiming at quantitatively assessing the optimal combination of laborers, labor objects, and labor materials. By separately calculating the scores of the three and then using these scores to calculate coupling coordination degrees, it reflects their synergistic effects and overall optimization degree. Thirdly, this paper adopts the CRITIC-entropy weight method to calculate new quality productive forces and explore the relationship between it and the GNP, to reveal whether there is a simple linear relationship between the two. It also uses the Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method and Markov chain analysis to systematically analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of levels and the sources of differences in the levels of new quality productive forces, revealing regularities and spatial spillover effects in geographical distribution and historical evolution.