Abstract: Some critical infrastructure (e.g. nuclear power plants and dams) are required to consider the effects of both horizontal and vertical ground motions for seismic design or assessment. Presently the study on vector hazard and vector site-specific spectra of horizontal and vertical ground motions for Chinese sites and their application in ground motion record selection are still insufficient. Therefore, this study applied the theory of vector probabilistic seismic hazard analysis and vector conditional spectra of horizontal and vertical ground motions at Chinese sites to the selection of ground motion records, and the joint selection method of horizontal and vertical ground motions based on the vector conditional spectra of Chinese sites was proposed. The results show that the horizontal and vertical ground motion records selected via this method can match the mean and standard deviation of both horizontal and vertical conditional spectra based on the joint occurrence information of horizontal and vertical ground motions, which provides seismic input for the analysis of structural seismic performance, multivariate seismic fragility analysis and vector seismic risk assessment considering both horizontal and vertical ground motions.