Abstract: By investigating and analyzing the earthquake damage performance and the in-situ observations of earth-rock dams, a series of criteria to control the safety of high earth-rock dams subjected to earthquakes are proposed in terms of three main influencing factors including slope stability, permanent deformation of the dam and deformation of peripheral joints. These criteria are used to study the limit earthquake-resistant capacity of a typical earth-core rockfill dam and a concrete faced rockfill dam, respectively. It is found that high earth-rock dams can resist strong earthquakes. The limit earthquake-resistant capacity of the two cases is as high as 0.5g, which means that the two dams can perform well without catastrophic subsequences even attacked by an earthquake with degree of nine. Furthermore, the limit earthquake-resistant capacity of high earth-rock dams largely depends on the safety criteria. The most important factor to control the safety of an earth-core rockfill dam under earthquakes is the slope stability while the deformation of the peripheral joint is the control factor for the safety of concrete faced rockfill dams.