The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) is used to assess anxious symptoms in both clinical and nonclinical populations. However, cross-cultural reliability and validity have not yet to be fully established. The aim of this study was to test the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the BAI. In this study, 230 psychiatric outpatients and 112 individuals from the community were included. All subjects received a psychiatric interview, and completed the study scales. To assess reliability, internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha and Guttman split-half) was calculated. To assess validity, a component factor analysis with promax rotation was performed. The factor structure was compared with Beck's original hypothesis. To assess convergent validity, 82 psychiatric subjects were evaluated with Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A) to compare against the Chinese version BAI score. Finally, sensitivity and specificity was determined to identify an optimal cut-off point to discriminate between anxious and non-anxious individuals._We found that the Chinese version of the BAI showed high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha =0.95, Guttman split-half coefficient=0.91). Factor analysis showed a two-factor structure: subjective anxiety and panic-somatic symptoms. The total variance explained was 58.04%, similar to Beck's original construct and supporting factor validity. The Chinese version of BAI also showed good convergent validity with HAM-A (Pearson's correlation =0.72). Finally, 13/14 was the optimal cut-off point for discriminating between anxious and non-anxious individuals. These results support the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the BAI.