Various questionnaires for screening diabetes in Chinese population were evaluated. Two questionnaires (Finnish Diabetes Risk Score and Danish Diabetes Risk Score) were applied. Sensitivity, specificity and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) for both questionnaires were calculated. The AUCs were 0. 760 (95% CI: 0.713-0.806) for the Finnish questionnaire (P<0.01) and 0.706 (95% CI: 0.647-0.764) for the Danish one (P<0.01). The sensitivities, specificities and predictive values of both questionnaires were not so good in the present survey as in the published reports. It suggests that these screening questionnaires must be modified to suitable for Chinese population.