The nutrient budget is an effective indicator of non-point source pollutions (NPSP). The increasingly
serious NPSP in China highlights the need for a method to estimate the nutrient balance on a macro
level to provide technological support to politicians and policy makers. In this paper, a mathematical
model and a comprehensive nutrient database were built on a county level in China. For 2010 in China,
more than 196,000 data items with 2464 records and 80 fields exist in the calculation. Coupling the
land use data in 2010 with an original resolution of 30 m, the spatial variability of the nitrogen (N) and
phosphorus (P) balances were mapped and analysed by resampling to 250 m. The results demonstrated
that the total N and P input for China was 42.7 and 10.6 million tonnes, respectively, with outputs of
35.7 and 3.8 million tonnes, respectively. The estimation of the nutrient balances revealed that the total
amount of N surplus was 6.95 million tonnes, equivalent to an average of 5.96 t N km−2 and ranged
between −25.90 t km−2 and 89.63 t km−2 for individual counties. Additionally, the total P surplus was
6.75 million tonnes, and the average P surplus of 5.27 t km−2, which ranged between −9.71 t km−2 and
77.44 t km−2 for individual counties. With the farmland and orchard information interpreted by remote
sensing data,the spatial distribution ofthe nutrient balances demonstrated that both the agricultural land
and nutrient balance were uneven, and the surplus of N and P were largest in the east and northeast parts
of China. The relationship between the chemical fertiliser inputs, outputs and nutrient balances indicated
that chemical fertiliser inputs positively correlated with the nutrient balances, and at present in China,
chemical fertiliser effectively managed the agricultural eco-environment, especially the P fertiliser. Thus,
reducing the rate of chemical fertiliser applied and enhancing the nutrient use efficiency should help
reduce the risk of NPSP.