Global vegetation dynamics profoundly change the terrestrial water cycling processes, especially with cascading effects on hydrological drought evolution. Over the past three decades, China has experienced extensive vege-tation greening. However, it remains poorly understood how much of a role vegetation changes play in hy-drological drought. In this study, we employ a process-based distributed hydrological model integrated with vegetation dynamics, and design two scenarios using the observed Leaf Area Index (LAI) data (noted as S1) and detrended LAI data (noted as S2) to examine the effect of vegetation changes on hydrological drought across China. The results show that hydrological drought occurs frequently across China, with an average drought frequency of 31.89% and a significant drying trend (average Standardized Runoff Index (SRI) trend: 0.133 decade-1, p <0.05). Vegetation change significantly influences drought categories and drought trends, while it has a slight effect on drought frequency over the whole of China. Specifically, vegetation change accelerates the drying trend by 25.47%, with the national average drying trend declining from 0.106 decade-1 in S1 to 0.133 decade-1 in S2. Spatially, vegetation increase (or decrease) amplifies drying (or wetting) trends in 61.04% (or 21.45%) of China, particularly in semi-humid regions. These findings highlight that vegetation greening alters surface water-energy balances, thereby intensifying regional hydrological drought in most areas in China. This study provides valuable insights for drought risk assessment and water resource management in ecosystems undergoing greening.