How to reproduce:
1. Enter /gamemode spectator;
2. Attach to another player (who is in sur/cre/adv mode);
3. Keep that player moving towards one direction (e.g. east);
4. You should see chunks stop loading after you reaching you view distance limit.
Pictures are attached.

A few notes:
1. Until when would the chunks stop loading depends only on client-side view distance settings but not the one in server.properties (e.g. you have your client-side view distance set to 32 chunks, while the server limits its view distance to 10 chunks, you will see chunks load normally until the other player reaches out for 32 chunks).
2. Entities are still rendered, while blocks are not.
3. As soon as you exit spectator mode blocks would render normally.