Abstract: To illustrate the main differences in structural seismic design codes between China and the United States from a structural system viewpoint, a comparative evaluation was conducted on a typical tall reinforced concrete (RC) frame-core tube building, a widely used structural form in both countries. The building, for which the original design information was provided by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), was first redesigned according to Chinese seismic design codes. Next, the component dimensions, dynamic characteristics, seismic design forces and construction material consumptions in these two buildings were compared in detail. Subsequently, nonlinear finite element models of the two buildings were constructed to evaluate their seismic performances under different hazard level earthquakes. This study finds that there are clear differences between Chinese and U.S. seismic design methods. For this tall building, the seismic design forces determined by Chinese response spectrum are larger than that determined by U.S. spectrum at the same seismic hazard level, and the Chinese codes specify a stricter inter-story drift ratio requirement, leading to larger seismic design forces and a correspondingly higher amount of material consumption. However, the two buildings exhibit roughly similar performances under earthquakes. These observations provide useful information for further optimization of the design of tall buildings in China.