Abstract: This paper makes demonstration analysis about economic development efficiency of 34 classical resource-based cities in China. The DEA model and cluster analysis are applied during the research. As a conclusion, it finds that the 34 RBC vary considerably in economic development efficiency. Generally speaking, the better petroleum cities and metal cities are, the worse coal cities and forest cities are. It is necessary for RBC to enlarge their economic scales. In the meantime, industrial conversion is of great importance for the Chinese RBC’s sustainable development in the future