The Chinese visceral adiposity index (CVAI) is a recently developed indicator of visceral adiposity. We investigated the predictive value of the CVAI for the development of dysglycemia (pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes) and compared its predictive power with that of the Visceral adiposity index (VAI) and various anthropometric indices. This community-based study included 2,383 participants. We assessed the predictive power of adiposity indices by performing univariate and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis and calculating the area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve according to their quartiles. Logistic regression analysis showed that individuals in higher CVAI quartiles at baseline were more likely to develop dysglycemia than those in lower CVAI quartiles. The area under the ROC curve for CVAI was significantly higher than that of other adiposity indices. In addition, among the various adiposity indices tested, the CVAI had the greatest Youden index for identifying dysglycemia in both genders. Our data demonstrate that the CVAI is a better predictor of type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes than the VAI, BMI, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio and waist-to-height ratio in Chinese adults.