College students in Hong Kong have high academic stress due to their frequent use of performance goals, including two subtypes, performance-approach (P-a) and performance- avoidance (P-av). The current study aims to investigate the inter-relationships among performance goals (PG), self-compassion (SC), and academic stress (AS). 133 college students were recruited to complete a set of questionnaires including Goal Orientation Scale, The Academic Stress Scale for Adolescent and the Self Compassion Scale. Results revealed significant correlation between one component of SC, isolation (the thought of one’s suffering as unique) and PG, which may be the root of the academic stress of Chinese students. it may be influenced by Chinese culture in which students are always driven by fear of failure. Moreover, results revealed an indirect effect of “isolation” on the correlation between PG and stress. Controlling “isolation”, the correlation between academic stress and PG significantly decrease. It provides us insight on intervening academic stress in means of SC, particularly for Chinese students. As expected, SC was found negatively correlated with academic stress but its intervening effect is still unknown. Hence, we are going to intervene academic stress of Chinese students by the means of SC in study 2.