To investigate the influence of motivation climate and self-regulation on university student engagement in distance education (DE) during the pandemic, a total of 436 Chinese university students were invited to participate in the online survey (including demographic variables, Chinese version of engagement scale, the perceived motivational climate scale, and the self-regulated learning abilities scale) in the Spring semester, 2020. Bicorrelation and regression analysis were used to explore the relationship among studied variables. Results showed that mastery motivation climate had a positive relation with student engagement, while performance motivation climate had a negative relation with it. Self-regulation could strengthen the positive relationship between mastery motivation climate and student engagement. However, the moderating role of self-regulation was not found in the relationship between performance motivation climate and student engagement. These findings could enrich our understanding about the motivation climate-student engagement relationship from self-regulation perspective and have implications for DE during the pandemic.