Abstract: To evaluate the rationality of the inter-story drift angle limit of reinforced concrete shear wall structures under horizontal earthquake actions in current Chinese code, this paper established 50 reinforced concrete shear wall numerical model structures for nonlinear analysis by comparing with the American code. Then the influence of various factors (such as site type, fortification intensity and structure height) on the ratio of drift angle abundance (β_C/A) between Chinese and American codes was analyzed, and the relaxing inter-story drift angle limit was recommended to evaluate the safety of the structure under rare earthquakes after relaxing the drift angle. In the same way, the rationality of relaxing drift angle limit in Guangdong Provincial Standard "Technical Specification for Concrete Structures of High-Rise Buildings" was discussed. The results show that all β_C/A values are greater than 1, which indicates that the inter-story drift angle limit in Chinese codes is stricter than that in American codes. Structure design using the recommended value of 1/550 as the inter-story drift angle limit for reinforced concrete shear wall structures is safe and reasonable. It is verified that the limit value of 1/180 for elastic inter-story drift angle of reinforced concrete shear wall structures under fortification earthquakes, as specified in the standard of Guangdong Province, is reasonable.