Objective To investigate the distribution of ideal cardiovascular health status in Chinese health checkup population. Methods Subjects were enrolled from a health checkup population coming to the PLA health management center from Sept 2009 to Mar 2016. Modified with China's specifications, lifestyle and checkup data were collected and analyzed according to the American ideal cardiovascular health standard. Results A total of 37664 people were included in the study, of whom 72.88%were male and 27.12%were female. Comprehensive analysis showed that, among 7 health indicators including smoking, physical activity, diet, fasting blood glucose, blood pressure, total cholesterol and body mass index, there were only 43 subjects (0.11%) whose lifestyle reached the ideal cardiovascular health status, 11 subjects were in the poor cardiovascular health status, accounting for 0.03%. The rest of the subjects were in the intermediate levels of cardiovascular health status. There was a large gap between the daily diet intake and the dietary recommendation, and there was also a large gap between the actual level physical activity and the ideal level of physical activity recommended by related guidelines, indicating that unhealthy diet and inadequate physical activity are two bottleneck factors. Dairy product intake has the lowest satisfaction ratio, followed by vegetable and fruit intake. Most subjects (94.10%) showed insufficient physical activity. The percentage of three status of cardiovascular health among young, middle-aged and elderly subjects differed significantly (χ2=1200, P=0.000), and presented an increasing trend of ideal cardiovascular health and a declining trend of poor cardiovascular health status with age from youth to middle age, to the elderly, which reflected insufficient physical activity especially among the young people, and then the middle-aged. Meanwhile, the proportion of ideal cardiovascular health in men was higher than that in women. Conclusion The rate of ideal cardiovascular health is relatively low in the study population, unhealthy diet and inadequate physical activity are two bottleneck factors. Encouraging people to develop good eating and exercise habits might be the most effective method to improve population's ideal cardiovascular health status.