Heortia vitessoides Moore is a destructive pest of Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Spreng, a significant economic crop. To understand the current and future geographical range change of this pest, we employed the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) to assess the potential habitats of H. vitessoides in China, integrating global distribution data with environmental variables correlated with H. vitessoides occurrence. The findings demonstrated that the primary environmental factors affecting the distribution of H. vitessoides included the precipitation of the warmest quarter, annual precipitation, annual mean temperature and slope. Given the current climate, the potential distribution area of H. vitessoides in China is 96.31 × 104 km2, representing approximately 10.03% of the total land area of the country. Projections under future climate scenarios indicate an overall contraction of suitable habitats, with the SSP245 scenario for 2050 suggesting the greatest contraction (15.64%) in the potential distribution area to 85.43 × 104 km2. Despite this decline, H. vitessoides maintains a robust and persistent presence in core habitats of southern China, where it maintains stable distribution patterns, which may facilitate its persistence and local spread. Some regions, particularly in south-eastern Yunnan and Sichuan, may experience slight expansions, continuing to threaten the sustainability of A. sinensis. This work is crucial for monitoring and control of H. vitessoides in locations where it currently occurs and where it may become prevalent in the future, thereby contributing to the preservation of Aquilaria sinensis and its associated economic ecosystems.