The historical simulation of phase five of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) experiments performed by the Beijing Climate Center climate system model (BCC_CSM1.1) is evaluated regarding the time evolutions of the global and China mean surface air temperature (SAT) and surface climate change over China in recent decades. BCC_CSM1.1 has better capability at reproducing the time evolutions of the global and China mean SAT than BCC_CSM1.0. By the year 2005, the BCC_CSM1.1 model simulates a warming amplitude of approximately 1°C in China over the 1961–1990 mean, which is consistent with observation. The distributions of the warming trend over China in the four seasons during 1958–2004 are basically reproduced by BCC_CSM1.1, with the warmest occurring in winter. Although the cooling signal of Southwest China in spring is partly reproduced by BCC_CSM1.1, the cooling trend over central eastern China in summer is omitted by the model. For the precipitation change, BCC_CSM1.1 has good performance in spring, with drought in Southeast China. After removing the linear trend, the interannual correlation map between the model and the observation shows that the model has better capability at reproducing the summer SAT over China and spring precipitation over Southeast China.