Abstract: several basins have developed along the western foothill of Xuefengshan Mt since the Late Mesozoic. Their evolution and deformation resulted from the intraplate deformation of the south China plate since the Late Triassic. During the Late Triassic-Early and Middle Jurassic， due to the left-lateral transpression along the Taojiang-Anhua-Xupu fault，early Yuanma foreland basin developed to the northwest of Xuefengshan Mt.，however to the west of the middle and southern mountain，pull-apart basin such as the Jingzhou basin formed because of the strike-slipping. During the Late Triassic there was no uniform foreland basin along the western foothill of Xuefengshan Mt.，the intraplate orogeny during this period was not strong. Since the Cretaceous， these basins have undergone three important events. In the Early Cretaceous the Yuanma basin underwent regional extension， the basin was not the foreland basin， the paleocurrent shows that the sediments come from Xuefengshan Mt to the east and Wulingshan Mt to the west. And during the late stage the basin also inherited early extensional mechanism， the growth faults and grabens developed，paleocurrents also show the main provenances are still the mountains to the east and west of the basin，this extension may be similar to the coeval event occurring across the whole south China. During the Cenozoic time， two important events occurred in the Yuanma basin. Due to the right lateral strike slipping of the Taojiang-Anhua-Xupu fault， derived northeast trending compression which resulted in the development of the northeast trending joints in the basin， many of these joints evolved into late normal faults. This mechanism for this event was the Indo-Eurasian collision during 55－25Ma which led to the development of serials of right lateral strike-slip faults in the east Asia. During the late period the northwest-southeast trending compression resulted in the thrusting along the east boundaries of the Yuanma and Tianzhu basins，the Paleozoic strata thrust over the Mesozoic rocks. This compression led to the development of one set of conjugate joints in the Yuanma basin. This deformation may be the same to the coeval deformation occurring in the east China during the Miocene，which was not related to the subduction of the Pacific Plate， but to the collision between the Philippine Sea Plate moving northwards and the Eurasian Plate in the Miocene.