[Background] Solanum carolinense is a notorious weed in America where it is native and other countries in Europe and Asia where it is introduced. In recent decade, S. carloninense has been declared a harmful quarantine weed in China since it invaded southern China as its seeds were frequently intercepted from imported commodities. It is necessary to identify areas at risk of an invasion and develop an efficient management strategy.[Method] GIS and spatial statistics were used to reconstruct worldwide invasion dynamics and identify its introduction vectors. MaxEnt niche modeling was applied to predict the potential distribution of S. carolinense in China and the model performance was evaluated by Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve.[Result] Its historical introduction from native America to other continents showed that the trade of commodities containing seeds promoted its invasion and spread across the world. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.789, which indicated that climatic niche models on the basis of native data had a highly predictive ability. And thus the modeled climatic niches were projected on to the landscape of the China. With the exception of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Gansu, Tibet, northwestern parts of Sichuan, most areas in China were potential areas for S. carolinense invasion.[Conclusion and significance] High introduction risk with increasing trade coupled with large potentially available distribution area may lead to increased invasion in the future. An early monitoring and eradication program should be adopted in the highly vulnerable areas, including coastal harbors, airports, transfer stations and processing factories of the imported cereal grains or fodder crops, to prevent further invasion and spread.