Polymorphisms in four regions of the bovine prion protein gene (PRNP) confer susceptibility to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). These polymorphisms include a 23-bp insertion/deletion (indel) in the promoter region, a 12-bp indel in intron 1, an octapeptide repeat or 24-bp indel in the open reading frame, and a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the coding region. In this study, we investigated the frequency distributions of genotypes, alleles, and haplotypes at these indel sites in 349 native Chinese cattle and sequence variants in 50 samples. Our results showed that cattle in southern China have low frequencies of the 12-bp deletion allele and the 23-bp deletion / 12-bp deletion haplotype, which have been suggested to be relevant to BSE susceptibility. Interestingly, a significant difference was observed between BSE-affected cattle and healthy Chinese cattle in the 12-bp indel polymorphism. A total of 14 SNPs were discovered in the coding region of PRNP in Chinese cattle. Three of these SNPs were associated with amino acid changes (K3T, P54S, and S154N). The E211K substitution that was recently reported in the US atypical BSE case was not detected in this study.