The environmental regulatory framework is crucial for sustainable development. In China, the framework has evolved into a complex, multidimensional system. However, due to the uneven regional development in China, the environmental regulatory framework exhibits significant spatial variations. Previous studies have overlooked the multidimensionality of China’s environmental regulatory framework and the temporal and spatial development differences among provinces. This gap poses challenges to comprehensively analyzing and evaluating China’s environmental regulatory framework. This study addresses this oversight by introducing a multidimensional composite indicator to assess the environmental regulatory framework’s spatial and temporal dynamics. By incorporating command-and-control, market-based, and public participation dimensions, we analyze data from 31 Chinese provinces over the period 2011 to 2021 using dynamic factor analysis. Our findings reveal that command-and-control and public participation dimensions play a dominant role in China’s environmental regulatory framework, while the market-based dimension requires further enhancement. We observe a general weakening in the intensity of the environmental regulatory framework from east to west, with provinces like Jiangsu, Shandong, and Hubei showing improvements over the decade, contrary to the decline in less developed, resource-rich western and northeastern regions. The study suggests that these latter regions could significantly benefit from leveraging local wind and solar energy resources to boost their renewable energy potential and fortify the market-based dimension of the environmental regulatory framework.