A high performance liquid chromatographic（HPLC） method was established for the analysis of the total contents of maleic acid and maleic anhydride in starch products.A better extraction method was developed by using 5% ethanol as extraction solvent and ultrasonic extraction time of 10 min.The optimal chromatographic separation conditions were as the follows:separation column:Plastisil ODS C18 column（250 mm×4.6 mm，5 μm）;mobile phase:methanol-1‰ phosphoric acid（2∶98）;detection wavelength:214 nm;flow rate:1.0 mL/min;column temperature:30 ℃.The limit of quantitation for formaleic acid was 5.0 mg/kg,and the linear range were in the range of 0.25-100 mg/L with a correlation coefficient of 0.999 7.The average spiked recoveries were between 88% and 89% with RSDs（n=5） less than 2%.The method could satisfy the requirement for the determination of the total contents of maleic acid and maleic anhydride in actual sample.