OBJECTIVE：To simultaneo usly determine the contents of atractylenolide Ⅱ ，β-eudesmol，atractyloxin and atractylone in Atractylodes chinensis ，and to evaluate the quality of A. chinensis with different growth years combined with color difference principle. METHODS ：HPLC method was adopted. The determination performed on Agilent Eclipse XDB-C 18 column with mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile- 0.2％ phosphoric acid （gradient elution ）at the flow rate of 1.0 mL/min；the detection wavelengths were set as 208 nm（atractylenolide Ⅱ，β-eudesmol），340 nm（atractyloxin）and 220 nm（atractylone）；the sample size was 15 μ L. Using atractyloxin as reference，QAMS was adopted to establish relative correction factors （RCFs） of atractylenolideⅡ，β-eudesmol and atractylone ；the content of each component in A. chinensis with different growth years were calculated. The contents of above 4 components were determined by external standard method and then compared with the results of QAMS. The color difference values of A. chinensis powder were measured based on color difference principle. The correlation analysis of above 4 components content with color was carried out by Pearson correlation analysis. RESULTS ：The separation degree of atractylenolide Ⅱ，β-eudesmol，atractyloxin and atractylone in A. chinensis was higher than 1.5. The linear range were 1.01-10.10，3.30-33.00，4.40-44.00，5.34-53.40 μg/mL，respectively. RSDs of precision ，reproducibility and stability tests were all lower than 2％，while the average recovery rates were 101.34％-104.67％（RSD＜1.5％，n＝6）. Using atractyloxin as reference ， RCFs of atractylenolide Ⅱ，β-eudesmol and atractylone were 3.896 7，5.928 2，9.727 9，with RSD of 0.35％，2.89％，0.36％ （n＝6），respectively. Relative deviation of 3 components （except for atractyloxin ） in 24 batches of A. chinensis ranged 0.03％-1.45％ between QAMS and external standard method ，which indicated that the results of two methods were consistent ，and the content of each component increased with the increase of growth years. Atractylenolide Ⅱ，β-eudesmol，atractyloxin and atractylone in A. chinensis had significant negative correlation with its color shade （L*），total color difference （E*ab）（P＜0.01）， and significant positive correlation with color red-green direction （a*）， color yellow-blue direction （b*）（P＜0.01）. CONCLUSIONS：The established HPLC-QAMS method can be used for the determination of atractylenolide Ⅱ，β-eudesmol， atractyloxin and atractylone in A. chinensis . The longer the growth period is ，the higher each component content is. The color of A. chinensis is closely related to the content of each component ，and the content of effective components is higher in A. chinensis with dark yellowish brown color.