Abstract: Using the daily meteorological data during 1981-2010 from 96 meteorological station in five different climatic zones of China,12 sunshine-based and 12 temperature-based daily global solar radiation models were compared and analyzed to determine the suitability of these models in different climatic zones. Five evaluation indexes,including determination of coefficient（ R~2）,root mean square error（ RMSE）,mean absolute bias error（ MABE）,mean bias error（ MBE）and global performance index（GPI）,were adopted to determine the optimal model forms in different climatic zones. Based on these models,the sunshine-based and temperaturebased generalized global solar radiation estimation models suitable for different climatic zones of China were developed. The results showed that the cubic sunshine-based and temperature diurnal-and average temperature-based models performed the best in each zone,furthermore,the generalized models based on the two models yielded high accuracy with average R~2 of 0.91 and 0.68.