Based on statistics data, remote sensing images, and case-investigations of cultivated land collected from 1984 to 2002, and with the help of the RS and GIS software, characteristics of the change in land use of cultivated land and its driving forces in the Wuzhong District of Suzhou City were analized. Results showed that the acreage of cultivated land was decreasing at the rate of 1.6% a year, and the change in land use was characterized by decrease in cultivated land and increases in water surface and construction land; the change in acreage of cultivated land was related to its geographic and topographic factors; the utilization intensity of the plantation of cultivated land has been declining with fluctuation; and the plantation has been changing from the grain-based cropping system to a grain-cash crop-based cropping system. Economic development, population growth, agricultural structural readjustment and policies were the main driving forces of the change. In the end of the paper, some suggestions are set forth.