From focal mechanism solutions of the earthquakes in the northern part of North China during the period of 2002～2006,the directions of principal stress axes in 4 stress sub-districts are analyzed using a grid test method.The characteristic of present crustal stress directions is discussed.Based on this result and on the focal mechanism solutions calculated for some events in the period of 1977～1998,in combination with some other study results,the temporal variation of present crustal stress directions in the northern part of North China is investigated.The re-sults confirm that the direction of crustal principal stress in some regions had somewhat rotated after the 1976 Tangshan M7.8 earthquake.The mean P axes of the focal mechanism solutions rotated clockwise not only in Tangshan sub-district,but also in Beijing and Xingtai sub-districts after the Tangshan earthquake.In Beijing and Xingtai sub-districts the orientations of principal stress axes in the period of 2002～2006 are consistent with that before the Tangshan earthquake,implying that the stress orientations has rotated back to the state before the Tang-shan earthquake in these two sub-districts.The directions of the mean P axes are nearly E-W in Tangshan sub-dis-trict since the M7.8 earthquake.The present stress field in the sub-district northwest to Beijing,or in the western part of the Zhangjiakou-Bohai fault zone,is relatively stable during the time period concerned in this study.Because of the limitation of data,this paper only states a possible variation of stress field in the northern part of North China in the recent decades.
