As a significant and necessitous issue,mining cities,especially the resource-exhausted ci-ties have already been given intensive attention by academic and governmental departments. From the perspective of sustainable development of mining cities,the intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for problems of mining cities are explored in this paper.Then,the economic benefits of mining cities are quantitatively analyzed using statistical data.Through the theoretical discussion of the sustainable development law of mining cities and demonstrative study on different types of mining cities in China,relevant strategies and measures are presented.The following conclusions are drawn: (1) The contradiction between cities and mining enterprises,which has been incorrect-ly dealt with for a long time,is the primary indigenous reason for the problems of mining cities.More seriously,the development gap,compared with non-mining cities,is becoming larger due to the domestic and international competitions.(2)As a whole,the level of economic development of mining cities,compared with the averaged level of countrywide cities,is lower.The economic benefit of miming cities is increasing owing to the economy of scale,and the economic situations of the oil-gots cities and iron-steel cities are comparatively better among all mining cities.(3)The premise that mining cities realize sustainable development is to fulfil the transformation of capital superiority so as to promote non-mining economy and substitute the mining economy step by step.