The western segment of the East Kunlun Mountains is one of the poorly studied regions in northwesternChina. Through a structural analysis of the typical sections, we have the following views: (1) There is a very welldeveloped fault system in the western segment of the East Kunlun Mountains and thrust propagation, normal slip anddecoupling are the chief deformation events in this area. (2) Although the thrusting started in the Late Carboniferous andLate Triassic-Early Jurassic, strong activity took place in the Miocene-Quaternary when the Kumkol basin was stronglydownwarped. (3) The tectonic pattern of coexistence of N-directed thrust propagation and S-directed normal slip in thisarea is consistent with the general tectonic pattern of the northern Qinghai-Tibet plateau and also very similar to that of theHimalayan region on the southern margin of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, but their directions between the thrust propagationare opposite and all the strong thmst propagations occurred from the Miocene-Pliocene to Quaternary. a period featuringstrong collision between the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate and abrupt uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Thisoppositely directed thrust propagation and normal slip reveal such kinematic characteristics as symmetric propagations ofdeep-seated materials towards the north and south beneath the Qinghai-Tibet plateau and gravitational sliding ofsuperficial materials towards the interior of the plateau. Therefore, the establishment of the fault system in the study areamay provide an approach to the study of deep processes of the northern Qinghai-Tibet plateau and the construction of aunified geodynamic model for the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.