Intrinsic time-scale decomposition and graph signal processing are combined to effectively identify a rotor–stator rubbing fault. The vibration signal is decomposed into mutually independent rotational components, and then, the Laplacian energy index is obtained by the graph signal of the autocorrelation function of rotational components, and the signal is reconstructed by an autocorrelation function of each proper rotation (PR) component relative to smaller Laplacian energy index (less complexity). Finally, characteristics are extracted from rotor–stator rubbing faults in an aeroengine according to square demodulation spectrum of a reconstructed signal. To validate the effectiveness of the algorithm, a comparative analysis is made among traditional intrinsic time-scale decomposition algorithm, combination of intrinsic time-scale decomposition and autocorrelation function, and the proposed intrinsic time-scale decomposition–graph signal processing algorithm. Comparative result shows that the proposed intrinsic time-scale decomposition–graph signal processing algorithm is more precise and effective than the traditional intrinsic time-scale decomposition and intrinsic time-scale decomposition and autocorrelation function algorithms in extracting characteristic frequency and frequency multiplication of rotor–stator rubbing faults and can greatly reduce the number of noise components irrelevant to faults.