Abstract: Objective To analyze the epidemiological characteristics of the people with early primary liver cancer (PLC) for providing a reference for the prevention. Methods Total of 850 patients with early PLC were used to screen the epidemiological characteristics, such as age, TNM stage, occupation, pathology type, tumor size and residential areas by descriptive analysis. Results In the 850 patients, hepatocellular carcinoma cases were 417 (49.18%), 30 cases (3.53%) were intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, 8 cases (0.94%) were adenocarcinoma, 13 cases (1.53%) were the other pathology types and 381 cases (44.82%) were pathology not specifically. The patients with early PLC in urban were 282 and that in rural were 568. The difference showed statistical significance (χ2 = 11.275, 41.995; P = 0.001, P ＜ 0.001) among the different groups in year of diagnosis (2004-2008 vs. 2009-2013) and occupation, but there were not statistical significance in gender, age, tumor size, TNM stage and pathology types (χ2 = 0.082, 0.613, 3.184, 1.803, 0.376, all P ＞ 0.05). Conclusions The rural people are susceptibility to PLC than urban, and the main pathology types are hepatocellular carcinoma in this study. Early PLC patients increased significantly in recent years, new detection technology related to the effective prevention and control measures should be taken at the same time.