OBJECTIVE The study's goal was to evaluate the performance of A1C and fasting capillary blood glucose (FCG) tests as mass screening tools for diabetes and pre-diabetes, as determined by the standard oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Data from 2,332 individuals aged 35-74 years who participated in a population-based cross-sectional diabetes survey in Qingdao, China, were analyzed. A 2-h 75-g OGTT was used to diagnose diabetes. The performance of A1C and FCG was evaluated against the results of the OGTTs by using receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis. RESULTS The prevalence of newly diagnosed diabetes and pre-diabetes (impaired fasting glucose and/or impaired glucose tolerance) was 11.9 and 29.5%, respectively. For subjects with newly diagnosed diabetes, the area under the ROC curve was 0.67 for A1C and 0.77 for FCG (P < 0.01) in men and 0.67 and 0.75 (P < 0.01) in women, whereas for pre-diabetes, these values were 0.47 and 0.64 (P < 0.001) in men and 0.51 and 0.65 (P < 0.001) in women. At the optimal A1C cutoff point of > or =5.6% for newly diagnosed diabetes, sensitivities (specificities) were 64.4% (61.6%) for men and 62.3% (63.3%) for women. CONCLUSIONS As a screening tool for newly diagnosed diabetes and pre-diabetes, the FCG measurement performed better than A1C in this general Chinese population.