The article evaluates and analyses urban resilience and constraining factors in 30 provinces in China derived from panel data from 2006–2021 using entropy weighting, Gini coefficient and handicap model. The study shows that the current level of resilience in most cities is relatively low, with an overall upward trend, and the spatial distribution shows a decreasing ‘high east, low west’ pattern, While the majority of the nation's low-resilient communities are found in the west and center, and high resilient towns are mainly found in the east. Concerning the decomposition of regional differences, the eastern region has the largest intra-regional difference and the smallest increase, the central region has a smaller difference and the largest increase, the northern difference shows a decreasing trend and the western difference is increasing year by year; in terms of inter-regional averages, the east-west difference is the largest and the north-central difference is the smallest. When analysing the level of barriers, the level of barriers to business resilience is decreased and the degree of barriers to infrastructural resilience is enhanced.; the number of fixed internet users, revenue from local budgets and local education expenditure emerge as important factors in increasing urban resilience, but the level of barriers varies across regions. Using the conclusions of this paper, the article proposes policy advice for enhancing urban resilience in terms of strengthening the connectivity of regional cities, optimising the allocation of resources in cities, and adhering to multi-system coordination of cities.