Compared with ion chromatography (IC), for inorganicion analysis capillary electrophoresis (CE) has its advantages, such as low consumption of reagent and time and low cost and its disadvantages, like low reproducibility and limited sensitivity.Analysis of soil aqueous extract for inorganic ions by CE is one of the fields that have been explored, however, so far the result of CE has not been matched to those of the popularly used methods, such as flow analysis (FA) of nitrate.This work focused on further study of parameters affecting the CE analysis of inorganic anions in soil, and comparison of its result with those of IC and FA.With the aid of the electrophoresis system using sodium chromate as the background electrolyte, cetyltrimethyl am monium bromide (CTAB) as the electroosmotic flow modifier and indirect ultraviolet detection method, length of soil extraction duration, effect of separation voltage and pH of the working buffer of capillary electrophoresis (CE) on quantification of inorganic anions were investigated.Using the chosen analytical condition, chloride, sulfate, nitrate and phosphate can be quantified in less than 5 min.Based on these results, chloride, sulfate and nitrate in soil water extract were analyzed by CE in five soil sam ples from different places in China, the results were consistent with that of IC.However, phosphate in the soil extract after extracting for 24 h without agitat ion was still under the limit of detection (LOD) of CE and IC, and the CE is relatively lower in precision compared with IC.A positive linear correlation of p< 0.10 was found between soil nitrate extracted with water, deter mined by CE and that extracted with 1 mol L KCl, determined with FA.