Abstract: Chinese cities have been experiencing remarkable restructuring in the reform and opening-up.The transformation of the existing urban central areas and the development of urban CBD systems have become a rather important part of the restructuring of Chinese cities since the 1990s with the introduction of the mechanism of land market,the rapid development of the tertiary industry,as well as the change of cities’ master plans.Based on the latest data from a variety of sources,such as the land leasing and transferring,the development of commercial office-buildings and shopping centers,the digital database of ’the 2nd National Census of Basic Economic Units in China’ and so on,using the basic theories on the contemporary CBD development in Western cities for reference,taking the city of Xi’an as a case,the dynamics,characters,tendency,and the relevant mechanisms of the development and evolution of the CBD system in contemporary urban China are analyzed in this paper.The results indicate that: a) the city’ old central area has been experiencing a functional ’purification’ characterized by the reduction of the total contained functions and the intensification of the commercial(especially retail) activities,which are resulted from the out-moving of manufactories,population,administration departments,and some producer services;b) the ’business centers’,i.e.the concentrated area of producer services,have been obviously ’floating’ outwards from the old central area,but the locations of the ’commercial centers’,indicated by the concentrated area of retail,are still relatively steady,as a result,the city’s CBD(central business district) and CRD(central retail district) are spatially separating from each other;c) the city’s new Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone(i.e.the state-level Xi’an HTDZ) has been playing a increasingly significant role in the development of the city’s CBD system and is growing into the actual new CBD of the whole metropolitan area of Xi’an because of the comparatively more favorable conditions in many aspects in it for the clustering and development of the producer business services;d) the city’s CBD system is tending to evolve into a ’bi-pole,multi-core’ pattern,in which the two ’poles’ refer to the separated CRD(still staying in the city’s old central area) and CBD(coming into being in the HTDZ),and the multiple ’cores’ refer to another four existing or upcoming business centers located in the city’s another two new development zones,i.e.Xi’an Economic & Technological Development Zone,and Xi’an Qujiang Tourism & Holiday Resort Zone,as well as the central sector of the city’s ’university belt’,i.e.the most concentrated area of universities and research institutions,respectively.