Through recent study, the author considers that the north-south-trending Kangding-Honghe tectonic belt is not a marginal uplift zone of the Yangtze Platform but a Tethyan-type collisional tectonic belt of which the crust-upper mantle can be structurally divided into three layers. The upper layer is the brittle upper crust, dominated by overthrusting and imbrication; the middle layer is the plastic lower crust and part of the upper mantle, represented by compression and shortening; and the lower layer is the upper mantle, probably belonging to the Yangtze Platform in light of the thickness of the lithosphere.