Climate plays a major role in biodiversity and vegetation types, and vegetation types and distribution reflect the regional climate. A rise in global mean temperature will lead to changes of global precipitation pattern, vegetation types and their distribution. However vegetation can react to climate change by genetic adaption and ecological buffering; hence, there is a temporal hysteresis in the response of vegetation to climate change. It has some limitations to study the northern boundary of subtropical zone and its movement only by climate indicators. Therefore, we introduced a species distribution model to conduct species potential distribution and reflect the movement of northern boundary of subtropical zone. In this study, we chose Cyclobalanopsis glauca, a typical subtropical evergreen broadleaved tree, to investigate the distribution pattern of Cyclobalanopsis glauca under climate warming and its implication for the northern boundary movement of subtropical zone. Based on 10 high resolution environmental data under current and future climate scenarios (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5), we modeled the present and future suitable habitats for Cyclobalanopsis glauca by the maximum entropy model (Maxent) and identified the distribution shifts by centroid movement under two climate change scenarios. The results showed that the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve value was 0.932, indicating that the prediction of the potential distribution for Cyclobalanopsis glauca was reliable. Results from the Jackknife test showed that the main environmental variables affecting the distribution of Cyclobalanopsis glauca were annual precipitation, precipitation of coldest quarter, temperature annual range and minimum temperature of coldest month, with the cumulative contribution of 94.2%. Currently, the potential suitable habitats areas for Cyclobalanopsis glauca encompassed 17.44×10 ⁵ km ², mainly located between 18°N-33°N and 91°N-121°E, the high potential habitats account for 25%, and the centroid of the current habitats was located in Yanling in Hunan province (26°31′12″N, 113°41′24″E). Under the two future climate change scenarios, the total suitable area of Cyclobalanopsis glauca would increase in the 2050s, the area of new habitats under RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 is 3.2×10 ⁵ km ²; the high potential habitats account for 32% under RCP2.6, however it only accounts for 26% under RCP8.5. Furthermore, the northern boundary of the total suitable area would shift to higher latitudes, and the centroid of the total suitable area would shift to the northwest in the future, indicating that the northern boundary of subtropical zone of China would move poleward of 1° under climate change in the 2050s.