To develop a brief, reliable screening questionnaire for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) for use in primary care settings. We developed a COPD Screening Questionnaire (COPD-SQ) using data collected from 19,800 subjects aged ≥40 years obtained from an epidemiological study of COPD in China in 2002 (Phase I). A stepwise logistic regression method was adopted for item reduction and scoring. We then assessed the COPD-SQ through a cross-sectional study (Phase II) among 3231 subjects aged ≥40 years. The final COPD-SQ consisted of seven items: age, smoking pack-years, body mass index, cough, dyspnoea, family history of respiratory diseases and exposure to biomass smoke from cooking. Using the questionnaire to screen for COPD in Phase II, we obtained high classification accuracy with an area under the curve of 0.812 (95%CI 0.786-0.838). The sensitivity, specificity and correct classification rates for COPD diagnosis were respectively 60.6%, 85.2% and 82.7% at a cut-off score of 16. The COPD-SQ can be used in first-level screening for COPD.